Steiger: (aside about equipment) There we go. I think I’ve got it. Okay, this is the River Runners Oral History Project, and this is gonna be Part 2 of an interview done with Wolf, Don Paulson. This is Lew Steiger, and it’s November 6, 2007, and we’re just startin’ on our second little SD card here. We’re pickin’ up about three or four .wav files into this thing. We were talkin’ about the Sandersons. When we ran out of the card, we were just talkin’ about those guys and their boats, talkin’ about.... What was it? You were sayin’ Rod Sanderson was a high-scaler when he met Norman Nevills.
Paulson: That’s the way I understand the story. And they were all workin’ at Marble dam site, and Norm came by, and somehow that got Rod’s interest or he went on that trip with him. I don’t know exactly, but somehow Rod, I think, went with Norm down the river, and that’s how they got doin’ it, got involved with the river. Now, from that, I’m sure Norm was rowin’. We’ll have to talk to Jerry Sanderson. (aside about equipment) Then they put together those little, like, CrisCraft-type boats and modified ’em to run the river with motors. I think they ran like two 30- or 35-horse Evinrudes. (aside about equipment) I remember them running--when they’ve talked stories about when they ran their hard-hulled boats with the motors on ’em, and did their trips. They had those Evinrudes, and they had shear pins, and they would go through--if they ever hit a rock, it would shear a pin. I remember them talkin’ about Hance, and they could take a prop out by breakin’ a shear pin at the top of Hance, and have it changed by the time they got to the bottom.
Steiger: (laughs) In the little boat?! Yeah, that would be pretty good.
Paulson: They got pretty good at pullin’ ’em up and changin’ that pin. That is one of the reasons, when I came along they went to those Mercurys, was they had like that slip clutch thing where you didn’t have the shear pin.
Steiger: You didn’t have to mess with that.
Paulson: Right. You were gonna break your prop, or prop blade or somethin’, but you would still have some momentum--or still some power. Or you could spin the whole spindle.
Steiger: No, you were gonna break the prop.
Paulson: Probably the prop blade was gonna break, probably.
Steiger: But you wouldn’t mess up the power head or the shaft.
Paulson: Yeah, exactly. When they would shear a pin--and they could shear a pin just dinkin’ a little rock or doin’ whatever, and then they were out of power. So that’s why they went with those Mercurys, the way I understand it. Those Mercurys were great, I loved ’em, they were good motors. I liked runnin’ ’em.
Steiger: They were bomber!
Paulson: Yeah, I liked runnin’ ’em, they were good. One person could actually pick ’em up and you could change it out. You know, they were a little heavy, but now the motorsrs they run today, they’re too heavy, the four-strokes.
Steiger: You know, it’s funny, I remember people would say, "Why do you have such a little motor? Why don’t you have a bigger one?" And I would say, "Well, because this is about all I can lift."
Paulson: Yeah, all of us.
Steiger: "And besides, it’s all we need." And then we got bigger. Partly, we were runnin’ faster trips.
Paulson: Yes. And a lot of that I see now. People want short trips.
Steiger: Well, they want ’em shorter. We went to these 25s, and they were really loud, but the power wasn’t so bad. And then they made us go to the four-strokes, and everybody got these Honda 30s, which are really quiet.
Paulson: Oh yes, they are. I’ve ran ’em.
Steiger: You can’t lift ’em, you can’t tilt ’em worth a shit.
Paulson: Uh-uh.
Steiger: And it’s funny, ARR, Arizona River Runners, on account of that, they went to 20s. They outfitted their whole fleet now....
Paulson: With 20 Hondas?
Steiger: Yeah. But you know what’s weird? When you’re like on a rowin’ trip or somethin’, you hear those comin’ a lot worse than the 30s.
Paulson: You do?
Steiger: Yeah, it’s somethin’ about it, it’s a higher frequency. They’re not louder, but they’re more noticeable.
Paulson: But you can hear ’em more, yeah. Wow.
Steiger: Obnoxious. I hate to say it, but they are, a little bit. You just hear ’em comin’ a lot longer. And I think it’s because the 30 is a three-cylinder.
Paulson: Instead of a four?
Steiger: Well, no. I think the 20.... It’s a four-stroke motor, but it’s three cylinders, and the 20 is two, and I think that the 20 just turns a lot more rpms or something. I don’t know what the heck the deal is. It’s a little bit of a step backwards, in terms of the sound. But they like ’em ’cause you can lift ’em.
Paulson: Exactly.
Steiger: And it’s not as much as a 30.
Paulson: Do they have a jackass, or do they just tilt?
Steiger: They’ve got a jackass.
Paulson: I miss the old jackass--I do.
Steiger: You mean the Wilderness’ just tilt?
Paulson: Yes. That’s it.
Steiger: That’s okay. That’s all right by me. They’ve got a transom?
Paulson: Yeah. Well, a cheater bar on ’em, whatever you want to call it. It gives you a little leverage to tilt it, you know.
Steiger: But they did away with the jackasses?
Paulson: There’s no jackass, yeah.
Steiger: That’s okay by me, because it’s faster, if you’re doin’ a turn-around or somethin’.
Paulson: It is. My thing was, when you got into shallower water, you could feather that jackass up and down a little bit--you could. Now you’re either in or out, that’s it.
Steiger: I liked that about a jackass, but the ones that I’ve always run don’t ever get the motor up, all the way out.
Paulson: No, they don’t.
Steiger: You couldn’t get ’em all the way out of the water. You’d get ’em to this far. I used to like to go backwards.
Paulson: It was a lift and tilt.
Steiger: Yeah. But if you’re backin’ down Hance, there were two little rocks that you’d have to just tilt over. And with your straight transom, that was no big deal--and your little 20-horsepower motor. But with a jackass and the 30, I quit doin’ it. I quit backin’ down shit, just for that. Well, specifically Hance, because it was too hard to get the motor up.
Paulson: Exactly. It is. I ended up breakin’ one off at Badger one time. I got down there in the really low water, and everybody was stacked up, up above, and all the boats, row boats, everybody, was settin’ there, and I was just real cocky at the time, thought I could put that boat anywhere I wanted to, and when ahead and run, and didn’t make it, and got spun around and backed onto a rock. Before I could get it lifted and tilted, the rock lifted the back end of the boat and smashed the motor and broke the whole lower unit off.
Steiger: That was the problem! If you’re gonna hit one backwards--bye bye!
Paulson: It got me--got me bad--gone, gone, history.
Steiger: Broke those thumb screws and just....
Paulson: Yeah, just gone. Exactly. So yeah, there was problems with ’em. The thing that was good about ’em was you could lift ’em and feather ’em in shallower water. The times that that really came into play was usually pullin’ out from a lunch beach type thing.
Steiger: Parkin’.
Paulson: Parkin’, yeah, or anything like that. Hardly ever in a rapid--just when you were tryin’ to maneuver around, tryin’ to get out of a lunch beach.
Steiger: You know it’s funny, those times when you go down there and make just the killer run, and just grease it, nobody’s ever there! (laughs)
Paulson: Exactly. That’s a fact. They never are.
Steiger: Those times when everybody’s standin’ around watchin’....
Paulson: I agree, they never are there.
Steiger: They’re never there when you do it good, and they’re always there, with the cameras, if somethin’ bad’s gonna happen.
Paulson: Yep.
Steiger: Seems like for me that’s the deal anyway.
Paulson: That’s a fact, it is.
Steiger: That’s been my experience. If somebody’s got a video camera or a big, good still camera, and they’re gonna go down and take pictures, those are the ones.
Paulson: That’s the ones you’re gonna get, yeah.
Steiger: That’s when you get trouble. That’s a really neat scrapbook.
Paulson: Robin Scarmazo [phonetic] made that up for me. Runs trips for Wilderness, has for years. Schoolteacher, and runs some trips.
Steiger: Well, it sounds like the evolution of Wilderness, it sounds like things are goin’ along pretty good.
Paulson: They seem to have a lot of respect for the old ways. They know their roots, they know they came from Sanderson. They have a lot of respect for that, and a lot of respect for [the fact that] it evolved from there. I think they consider themselves mostly the boatmen from that thing. I know Wilderness is not a family-owned operation like some of the others are now. You don’t notice that, when you work with them. I mean, it’s just workin’ with guys like me and Breck, and even Butch and some of these other guys that have been around forever. And that’s all you know, that’s what you are. June Sanderson was there, Patti Ellwanger was there, you know. Billy around all the time.
Steiger: June’s still involved?
Paulson: June retired. She’s not involved.
Steiger: Oh yeah, Patti’s moved up to her slot.
Paulson: Patti’s doing her job now. But yeah, I think it’s still a lot of older-type people around there, that came from the Sanderson era, and Hatch, all that. It’s a good thing. They seem to do okay.
Steiger: I think it’s been a real blessing, just to be involved in the business.
Paulson: That’s what it is. And that’s what I think all boatmen.... I know that there’s always some of that "my company’s better than yours." And there are differences in the way everybody does stuff, and everybody looks at things, but just to be part of what the whole program is, and bein’ the king, and then runnin’ a boat, and takin’ people through, no matter what outfit you work for, is a good thing, I think. We’ve always fought to.... And I’ve done a lot of both, motors versus oars type stuff. And there was always that little kind of hardheadedness--you know, mine’s better, whatever I’m doin’. To me, it was just people down there doin’ trips, takin’ people through the canyon, and either way is a good way. As long as the people are enjoyin’ it, and they’re havin’ a good time, heck, that’s what it’s all about.
Steiger: I agree. Anymore it’s not so much motor.... There was that time of motor versus rowin’. Now it’s private versus commercial.
Paulson: Oh, yes, and I see that now.
Steiger: That’s the new motor-rowin’....
Paulson: Yeah, everybody, all the privates. I mean, goddang there’s millions, they’re everywhere.
Steiger: I don’t know that we need to get started on that, although it’s a little ironic. Well, I don’t know, I didn’t contribute to the new plan at all, I didn’t have any input.
Paulson: I didn’t either.
Steiger: And then I groused about it when they came up with it. I was mad at ’em, because I thought.... I was really mad at ’em, because I thought, "You can’t increase overall use 30 percent and think you’re doin’ a good thing for the Grand Canyon." I thought they ought to take some away. Or not take away from the commercials, but I always wanted them to find a way to buy the littler companies out, and move those days over. But that didn’t happen, and I was all mad at ’em. But last year, I gotta say, I did four trips, and there was only one time, one major [cluster-expletive] that I ran into.
Paulson: Was it? So that’s good.
Steiger: Yeah. I mean, there was one time everybody was stacked up at Deer Creek, and there were 250 people at Havasu. We avoided it. But that was a one-shot deal, and other than that, things were pretty good.
Paulson: That’s been okay, because I thought it would be more like that all the time--I did.
Steiger: I did too. And I don’t know, because I didn’t really get to go in the shoulder season, which I’d like to.
Paulson: I’ve heard some of these guys talk about whether they’ll go down with six or eight people and take a major camp, and you’re comin’ in with....
Steiger: Well they do that, and there’s this guy, Tom Martin, who’s cast himself.... He’s written a guide book for these guys.
Paulson: For the privates?
Steiger: Yeah. And there’s this big ol’ book, and in there they encourage you to go down. They encourage these guys to go down and take the biggest possible camp.
Paulson: They did?
Steiger: Yeah!
Paulson: What the hell’s that all about?
Steiger: And there are these guys.... You know, the way the park’s got it, you can do an eight-person or a sixteen-person trip. Those guys are adamant that just ’cause you’re on a little trip doesn’t mean that you should cheat yourself out of the good camps. It’s really aggravating.
Paulson: The guys that I’ve been around, it is to them, I know.
Steiger: I think most people--they’re gettin’ this out of the guide book, and I think you ought to just take what you need, in terms of a camp. And there’s lots of camps for eight people, for cryin’ out loud.
Paulson: Yeah. I know they seem to be struggling with their.... Because they still do some changeovers, exchanges, which I don’t know [unclear 203:39].
Steiger: What I notice about the canyon is there’s definitely.... Do you notice the beaches being smaller?
Paulson: Oh yeah, I think they definitely are.
Steiger: That’s what jumps out at me. You know, the water’s lower.
Paulson: Yes, it is.
Steiger: So there’s more available. And I like low water. Seems like now there’s like a shoulder season, spring and fall, it’s 6,000-12,000 [cfs], and somewhere it’s 10,000 to 18,000. For me, I much prefer the shoulder season. There’s more rocks and stuff, but it’s manageable. Actually, rowin’ a dory, there’s a lot more rocks, but it’s less pushy, it’s not so huge, and what I really like about it is you can always find a camp somewhere.
Paulson: Oh yeah.
Steiger: Whereas when it’s 18,000 or 20,000, it’s hard to find ’em.
Paulson: You’re real limited, yeah, you are. I agree.
Steiger: And I don’t remember it ever bein’ that hard. Do you remember, like when we started, I don’t remember it ever bein’ that hard to find a camp. I remember you could always find somethin’ somewhere. I mean, there were certain stretches where you didn’t really think of it, but there was like a lot more camps above Havasu. There were little camps--Sinyella and places where we’d go, that aren’t there anymore.
Paulson: Last Chance is about gone, there’s not much there.
Steiger: Yeah, and Upset.
Paulson: Yeah, exactly. I’ve even noticed Upper National seems to be--from what we were used to in our era--I mean, it’s not the same [beach?].
Steiger: Littler. It’s still campable, but it ain’t....
Paulson: It’s not like that big white beach that we used to pull into.
Steiger: No. That big white beach that I got a two-boat ARR trip stuck on, where the water was a hundred yards away! (laughter)
Paulson: Yeah, that beach. That’s the same one. (laughter) That’s it.
Steiger: The change of the month. Oops.
Paulson: Yeah, I have noticed that for sure. It’s changed, it’s evolved, the whole canyon has, you know. This is just in our short time. God, think of all the millions/billions of years it’s taken to do this.
Steiger: And you think of the Indians, too.
Paulson: That’s too much for me.
Steiger: Look at the stream of humanity that’s flowed through there. It didn’t start with us, by any means.
Paulson: No. Wasn’t it after ’72 or whatever it was--wasn’t the total user days 16,000? And then they bumped it up to 21,000 or somethin’, and now it’s higher than that, 25,000 or so, or 30,000?
Steiger: Oh, in terms of total number of people? I tell everybody it was 12,000 per year when they put in the quota.
Paulson: Okay. And then they bumped it up?
Steiger: My standard spiel, and it’s been this way for a few years--I mean, it’s sort of--I mean, I’m tellin’ everybody now it’s about 30,000--28,000 to 30,000 people per year goin’.
Paulson: I know from the time these things were happenin’, there’s a lot more people down there now on boats than there was back in those days.
Steiger: Way more. Well, this new plan....
Paulson: And we didn’t see very many privates. You’d see a few, but it wasn’t.... You know, my theory on that is people didn’t have boats, for one thing. I mean, the river whole thing was just startin’. A lot of people didn’t even know what it was. But the people that did, didn’t have boats to go do private trips with. You either worked for an outfitter, or you borrowed an outfitter’s boats to go do trips. Now everybody rents boats, you can find boats anywhere you go.
Steiger: Yeah. It was boats, or the know-how.
Paulson: Yeah, there was neither one.
Steiger: I think a lot of people--I look back at the kind of people that we were gettin’, like I would be willing to bet you that today, if your average group, if you had ’em all stranded over there above Lower Lava on the left, you would just not even say to ’em, "swim over."
Paulson: Because they aren’t gonna do it.
Steiger: Well, they wouldn’t make it.
Paulson: Oh yeah, they wouldn’t make it. The wouldn’t come through it.
Steiger: Do you remember specifically the people that did that?
Paulson: No, not much.
Steiger: Were they hardier?
Paulson: I think in general our groups were hardier in those days. Now, those people in particular, I can’t.... They were just normal people. I definitely think in general, yeah, that the people were tougher, they could handle stuff more.
Steiger: I think it was just a sort of a different.... It was a different slice of society back then, ’cause it was just a little more adventurous.
Paulson: Well, it was, and they were there for an adventure.
Steiger: Not that you can generalize, because you can’t, ever.
Paulson: No, you can’t. There’s still some. One of the things--I mean, I never worried about, because I told them to jump in the water, that they were gonna sue me ’cause I did that, you know.
Steiger: That thought never crossed your mind.
Paulson: Nowadays you’d have to think of that. Man, if somethin’ goes wrong, I, and the company, and everybody else could get in big trouble here. My whole thought was just to get everybody back together.
Steiger: "I gotta get my trip together," yeah. "And this is the only way we an do it."
Paulson: Of course now, [unclear 209:23] softer.
Steiger: And if you’d have left them there....
Paulson: Oh, I couldn’t! And then I had people downstream....
Steiger: They’d have been there at least overnight.
Paulson: Yes, at least overnight--at least.
Steiger: With nothin’.
Paulson: With nothin’, not even a sleepin’ bag.
Steiger: And maybe days.
Paulson: Yes. And I didn’t know when the next trip was comin’. I knew it wasn’t at least until the next day. And if there was somethin’ that day.... Probably was, but I don’t know that. So my whole thing was, "I gotta get ’em from there to here, to get the middle group of the people that had been on my boat; and then we still got another guy downstream somewhere." So I had ’em in three spots, you know.
Steiger: Plus the upside-down boat.
Paulson: Yes, and an upside-down boat somewhere down there that the guy’s freakin’ out on. If we don’t get to him tonight, he’ll go drown himself or somethin’, because he thinks he killed a bunch of people.
Steiger: Whew! God!
Paulson: I just know that there’s a lot more "man you can’t do that, because if something happens, everybody’ll go down." It’s like, "Ah, hell."
Steiger: Boy, what an amazing thing to have to go through. I mean, for you, just to see this thing go--the first one....
Paulson: Yeah, I was. I can still see it.
Steiger: You must have just been dumbfounded.
Paulson: I can still see it right here in my head, right now, goin’ up and over. Yeah, I can. "What the hell?! Why did that happen?! That’s not supposed to happen!"
Steiger: Workin’ for Grand Canyon Dories.... I went to work for Martin just before he sold the company, and worked a bunch of years for them guys. And then I jumped ship and still do a few for them, but I’m doin’ a lot more GCE. But I had it in my mind, Dories, learnin’ from Kenton Grua and those guys, it was like goin’ to war, and the big thing was, "Okay, if a boat goes over in Lava, we are not going through Lower Lava. We are gonna get ahold of this thing, we gotta get everybody out before there, you gotta get the boat right-side up." Which is hard.
Paulson: Oh yes.
Steiger: I mean, especially if you’re just rowin’. Usually, if you’re runnin’ right, you can’t get in until below the little black rock that sticks out way down there. So you got between there and Lower Lava to do whatever it is that you’re gonna do.
Paulson: Right, exactly. And that’s at least halfway, or maybe more, down there.
Steiger: More. So there’s so little time. But GCE and other rowin’ or private guys, they don’t seem to think about that. You’re more apt to go down through there, for sure.
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: And if you hadn’t thought about it in advance, there’s just no time. You had to really have a plan. And motoring, I never had a plan for that.
Paulson: Well, and you don’t. And you wouldn’t today. And I wouldn’t.... Other than after it happened, I just know better than to take off after the upside-down boat. I don’t care now, even with more people down there, I’m still gonna start gettin’ the.... I’m not gonna chase the upside-down boat and leave people stranded behind me. I gotta get them, and then deal with what I got when I catch up to it. I thought I could shove him into shore there, probably above Little Lava on the [left]. I thought I could maybe get him there. Well, when I couldn’t get him there, by that time we’re both.... I mean, I couldn’t get back to that point. We’re gone.
Steiger: It’s pushing you down.
Paulson: We’re gone, he’s pushing me down, he’s in front of me. Then I thought, "Well, I’ll try to get him into the eddy here by the beach." Couldn’t make that. Even went around that next turn. And I went, "Man, I can’t go no farther. I can’t get you in." Every time I got a.... And all the weight’s hangin’ down here, which makes it.... ’Cause I’d pushed boats around before, but upside down, the weight....
Steiger: Upside down, a little more drag.
Paulson: Yeah, it was harder to get in a point where I could just shove him, you know. I couldn’t catch a point just right to push him over. The next thing I know, we’re goin’ on down, and I go, "That’s it, we’re gone." It was me, Helen was with my on my boat, and him, and that’s it. Everybody else was gone. I’m goin’, "I gotta go back and get some people. Good luck."
Steiger: There’s some stories about rowboats, that kind of thing at Crystal.
Paulson: Yeah. And I always thought Crystal would get even a motorboat.
Steiger: Which is has.
Paulson: Yup, it has. And I know some got hung up on the wall there at Slate, I guess.
Steiger: Yeah. There’s been a Canyoneers boat went over on that thing--I think on that thing.
Paulson: Against the wall?
Steiger: Yeah, on that point over there, far left.
Paulson: Yeah, that’s bad. Man, you get on that wall, man, it’s bad.
Steiger: There again, I was talkin’ to Allen Wilson, doin’ this oral history on an ARTA trip. He was an old ARTA boatman. He was with Peter Wynn and a bunch of old ARTA boatmen on a private trip, and they were camped at Schist Camp, kind of all jacked up about Crystal, and they watched this Canyoneers boat go by, drive by ’em, and they got down there, and there’s the guy upside down [unclear 214:39].
Paulson: Yeah, exactly.
Steiger: Well, I’m just tryin’ to think of an intelligent question here. When you were workin’ there at the power plant, did you think about the river?
Paulson: Yeah. You know, when I first left the river and went out there, it was a real shock. I went from "Wolf" to "Don" or "Donnie," and these people out there had no clue. I mean, they knew about the river, but didn’t care.
Steiger: Didn’t know what that was, or what you’d done.
Paulson: No. Didn’t matter to them what or who I was, or what I’d done, or anything. And it was an ego bust. I went from bein’ a Grand Canyon boatman to just bein’ a normal guy workin’ shift work out here. I had to fight myself, to make myself stay there for the first, especially, year or two. It was a culture shock for me, for sure--from all the years of workin’ the river and doin’ that thing, to comin’ into this kind of an environment was tough for me, it was. I did it because I felt like I needed to do it. It paid a decent wage, but mostly I got some medical and some retirement benefits out of it, which I felt like at that time in my life I needed. I was thirty-six when I went out there, and felt like I needed to do that, you know. Just a time in my life.... I just couldn’t see myself staying "a guide." If I could have seen myself moving into some management or some other kind of a position with the river outfit, I would have stayed. But I was afraid I was going to [stay] a guide, and I could tell my back was breakin’ down. I didn’t know what other medical problems I might have. I was afraid I might get to be around fifty and broke down, and then what the hell do you do? "We can’t use you, you can’t work." So now what am I gonna do? So that was a big incentive into my takin’ that job out there. I knew I could still do some trips, a trip or two type thing every year, which I did. And so it actually worked out okay. But the shock of goin’ to a job like that after bein’ a river guide was pretty big. I had to force myself to eat it, to take it. And I don’t regret it, I’m glad I did it. If I would have maybe stayed with the river, it would have probably worked out, and I could have possibly--that might have worked. I don’t know, because I didn’t go that route. I think it probably would have, I think I could have probably stayed involved, totally involved with the river. But I didn’t know how that was all going to fall into place. I knew Sandersons was sellin’, and I didn’t know where I was gonna fit into their program. I just didn’t know. So I took that job, and I’ve never regretted doin’ it. Hell, it’s been okay.
Steiger: I think it is tough, especially if you’re not lined up for management.
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: I mean, that’s been.... I know exactly that. It’s interesting because here.... I mean, I’m fifty-one, my knee hurts.
Paulson: Yes, it does. I had to have my knees redone, my back.
Steiger: I’m not in near as good a shape as I was. And you can see the writin’ on the wall, but you get.... I mean, for me, I’ve done some other things, and had some successes and some failures....
Paulson: Well, this is probably a good thing for you. I mean, I don’t know what kind of livin’ it is.
Steiger: Oh, it’s not financially [rewarding]. It hasn’t been all that good yet. And I didn’t even.... I mean, it hasn’t been, and I don’t know that it ever will be, but it’s been a great privilege. Sometimes I gotta say, especially lately, I’m like, "What the [expletive] am I doin’ runnin’ around recording everybody else’s life for? What about my own?"
Paulson: When’s yours gonna get recorded? It is, isn’t it? I thought I’d seen that in....
Steiger: They put it in there that I’ve gotta do one. It was pretty funny. They put that in there, and I said, "It’ll be a cold day in hell!" (laughs) I’m not puttin’ all that shit on tape!
Paulson: Exactly!
Steiger: And I was stallin’ off. I guess it’d be Brad McHugh who’d talk to me. And I was like, "No [expletive] way."
Paulson: No way, I’m not gonna do that. I agree.
Steiger: And then I finally.... Honestly, I was like, "Well, that’s not gonna happen, ’cause I’m not doin’ that." But then I got to thinkin’ about it and I thought, "Well, you little [expletive], you can’t...."
Paulson: Do everybody else....
Steiger: Yeah, you can’t run around and ask everybody else to do it, and you’re not willin’ to cough up a little somethin’.
Paulson: Well, I’m probably like a lot of your people. I got that letter, I thought, "Well, what the hell, I don’t have anything that I can say."
Steiger: Oh no, you always were on my list. I just honestly--I’ve been tryin’ to not have it cost too much money, try to be responsible, and just try to work ’em in where it’s handy, where it doesn’t cost too much. And the whole selection process over the last several years was totally haphazard. But you always, honestly--and I’m not sayin’ this just to suck up to you, in my mind you were somebody I looked up to when I started.
Paulson: Well, thanks, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Steiger: I always saw you as really one of the people I really admired ...
Paulson: Well thanks Lew.
Steiger: ... who figured it out back then--one of the senior boatmen of the various companies.
Paulson: Yes, right.
Steiger: That’s the truth. And as far as what the hell we’re doin’ here, I don’t know. Just writin’ our names on the wall. (phone rings, recording paused) I’m just blathering on here, but I’m doin’ it just because.... I’m thinkin’ maybe we would stumble onto somethin’ of value.
Paulson: I don’t know....
Steiger: I guess we were talkin’ about just gettin’ old and all that. It’s been hard, our generation. You got out and got it figured out. There’s quite a few of us that didn’t quite figure it out, and we’re hittin’ the wall now. It’s gonna be interesting. I mean, I’m hangin’ on by my fingernails, and I want to, I want to keep doin’ it as long as I can.
Paulson: Oh, I know.
Steiger: But I can see the writin’ on the wall.
Paulson: That’s it, that’s the problem.
Steiger: And some companies are better than others, as far as what they’ll do to take care of you. But it’s hardly in anybody’s.... I don’t know of hardly any company where they’ve really got it laid out for you to retire. They’ll take care of you while you’re doin’ it, but....
Paulson: While you’re there, exactly.
Steiger: But when you are too stove-up to do it....
Paulson: I know. And I don’t know of anybody that’s doin’ that, that will help ’em when.... It’s just a tough deal. It’s a tough deal for boatmen. I mean, you get doin’ that job, and it’s such a great thing, and "I can do this forever!" and "It’s so much fun, I get to meet all these new people, and there’s so many cool things goin’ on! I take passengers and they tell me I’m great."
Steiger: Yeah! That’s for sure!
Paulson: It’s hard to go away from that, it is. I don’t know, I just felt maybe I.... I needed a bigger security blanket. I didn’t dare just let my life keep goin’ on, with that, because I was too afraid of what was gonna happen down the road. I look back on it, I don’t know, it would have probably worked out fine, and that’d be just dandy. Or maybe it wouldn’t have. I might be, who knows? But I chose to go get a job that gave me some benefits, and I didn’t have to worry about down the road so much, you know.
Steiger: Sittin’ here right now today, that’d be pretty hard to argue with. I think it really would be.
Paulson: At the time, I didn’t know. At the time I was like, "Man, what have I done? I didn’t need to do this. But I did." Here’s Joann. Let’s shut down. (greetings exchanged)
Nissen: Donner, don’t forget to tell about the trip with Elzedo [phonetic], with all the gay guys. (laughs)
Paulson: No, I’m not goin’ down that road.
Nissen: Oh, that is so classic! We were telling some stories last night that were funny.
Paulson: I’m sure.
Nissen: I’m sorry.
Steiger: You think not? (laughs)
Paulson: We picked up a trip at Phantom, oar trip, we were rowin’, and there were sixteen guys, and it turns out they were all gay. And this was back in the day when there was not....
Steiger: This is you and Elzedo and....
Paulson: And Tony Kazan and Paco--Jack Clifford [phonetic].
Steiger: (laughs) Oh yeah, there’s a bunch of kind, sensitive....
Paulson: Yeah, exactly, sensitive boat boys. And I was trip leader, and when they all found out, God, I remember Paco or one of ’em come runnin’ over to me, "Wolf! Wolf! Hey, the guys on my boat are all gay!" I said, "Well, they’re all all gay. What the hell you want me to do?" (laughter) "Just deal with it!" But one of the things we did do--this can’t be in the book or anything--we were at Crystal and Paco come up and said, "Wolf, do you mind if I run first?" And I said "God, I don’t care who runs first. Go!" He said, "All right, I’m gonna go drown me some [unclear 224:19]." He went and ran the Maytag and flipped.
Steiger: Oh, he did?!
Paulson: Yeah. The two or three guys ridin’ with him were okay, but he got beat up pretty hard.
Steiger: He wasn’t really tryin’ to do that?
Paulson: Yes! He wasn’t tryin’ to kill ’em, but he was tryin’....
Steiger: He was tryin’ to flip.
Paulson: I think he was tryin’ to flip, yes. Serious!
Steiger: That seems a little counterproductive for one’s own ass.
Paulson: Well, it was! He got hurt. The other guys made it all right. Just stuff not for....
Steiger: Oh yeah, there’s stuff we wouldn’t want to....
Paulson: But anyway, I didn’t know, we didn’t know. To me, I thought, "What the hell, it don’t matter." I mean, I wasn’t worried about ’em attackin’ me. It didn’t matter.
Steiger: How’d it turn out in the end?
Paulson: I think they were okay.
Steiger: Not one of your favorite trips?
Paulson: Not one of my favorites, but for me, I asked them about how or why, or "Why are you guys...." Or, "what happened?" It was kind of eye-opening for me a little bit. For Alzedo and Paco and them, they just wanted absolutely nothin’ to do with them. They would get ready and call, "Dinner, girls!" at night, and stuff like that--just harrassin’ ’em. [unclear] "Leave ’em alone."
Steiger: I remember doin’ a trip where we had a bunch of gay guys from I don’t know where--New Orleans or something, someplace like that. But it was just a lower-down trip, we just got ’em at Whitmore. And half of these guys were these gay guys.... Or no! they were like house painters from San Francisco, or somethin’ like that. And then we had a bunch of rednecks from South Carolina. We had these two different camps.
Paulson: Oh, I didn’t have to deal with both of ’em.
Steiger: And the funny thing was.... And everybody was all standoffish. But then we went down there to 220 and we had this volleyball game, and it was the gay guys against the rednecks, and they had a few crew members salted in on either side, and that was pretty good. It ended up with a fairly happy ending.
Paulson: Good. Good.
Steiger: Yeah, we don’t need to probably....
Paulson: Yeah, don’t need to go down that road. That’s what I told her.
Steiger: Yeah, [don’t need to] dwell on that one. We were sittin’ up there talkin’.... I’ve talked to so many people I can’t even remember who’s told me what--but sittin’ around, our last little Fred mission, just talkin’ about some of the strange things where people flipped out. John Stoner told this story about he’s down there on a--maybe it was even a Wilderness trip. Anyway, he’s down there workin’, and he’s across from Deer Creek, and this private trip rows over to him and says, "We need to evacuate somebody. It’s this woman, and she’s flipped out on us. Will you take her?" And Stoner’s like, "Well, I can’t take her, our boats are full. We don’t have any room. Absolutely both boats are maxed out." And the guy said, "Well, would you take her? Maybe you could evacuate her. Because I’ve got her over there, she’s duct taped. Her mouth is duct taped shut and she’s tied up." (laughter) And Stoner said, "Well, you know...."
Paulson: That happened on a Wilderness trip. I don’t know if.... They were at Saddle Canyon, though.
Steiger: Julie Munger told me, but she thought it was Nankoweap.
Paulson: Just this year.
Steiger: Oh! this year?!
Paulson: Did you hear that one?
Steiger: No.
Paulson: Well, same thing.
Steiger: Well, this guy, why they wanted this private lady.... I’ll finish this, and then I’ll get you to tell me your story. She’s sittin’ over there, and Stoner says, "Well, you know it’s gonna cost you a lot of money if you evacuate her. You’ll have to pay for the helicopter and all this." And the guy says, "Well, how much money will that cost?" And Stoner says, "I think it’ll be about $500-$600." This is back then, whenever that was. The guy thinks about it, he paddled over to him in a kayak, and he’s sittin’ there thinkin’ about it, and finally he says, "Well, I guess we’ll just keep her." (laughs)
Paulson: No kidding?! "Never mind." (laughter) [unclear] but I really don’t want it in this thing. EDITING ALERT.
Steiger: Okay, yeah, I know, it probably wouldn’t be professional.
Paulson: But they had a....
Steiger: A psychiatric issue?
Paulson: One of their boatmen’s wives went nuts, off the end, trying to drown herself. They finally captured her. Then she got in the motor well, and then somebody was hangin’ onto her, and then she went over the side of the boat. It was a motor trip. Anyway, before they could get it all under control, they had some duct tape, and they took some sleeping pads and wrapped her up in these pads and stuff, and got an evac.
Steiger: I’ve seen when people lose it, they really do lose it, and they really can. And then there’s no rhyme nor reason.
Paulson: It was tough to deal with. Yeah, man, tough, God dang. I mean, I wasn’t there, but I heard ’em talkin’. Some guys tried to grab her, you know.
Steiger: Julie Munger told a story on that Schmedley trip. Some guy was a psychiatric guy she remembered. This was like mid-seventies.
Paulson: With the gun? Is that the one? Go ahead, I don’t mean to interrupt you.
Steiger: I thought it was a knife.
Paulson: Oh! I think it was.
Steiger: And he flipped out and he was tryin’ to cut the boatman or whatever. He got all claustrophobic.
Paulson: Threatenin’ to kill him and all that stuff.
Steiger: They had to subdue him.
Paulson: Yeah, I think it was too.
Steiger: She said that really brought the rest of the trip together.
Paulson: I’m sure! I’m sure.
Steiger: Made an impression on everybody.
Paulson: Exactly.
Steiger: This is somebody that’s just rowed and paddled all her life, and is about as crunchy granola as you could get. She said that trip was one of her fondest.... She had a wonderful time, loved that trip.
Paulson: Great, really, very good, exactly.
Steiger: There’s so many of ’em, where it seemed like that was where it was workin’.
Paulson: Yeah, exactly.
Steiger: They had a lot more where it seemed like everybody was really happy.
Paulson: Yeah. Right.
Steiger: That was more than one [unclear 230:40] else.
Well, Joann, I don’t know, we’re windin’ down here.
Nissen: I was asking if you were just startin’, or....
Paulson: No.
Steiger: No, we’ve been goin’ for a while.
Nissen: You got the Schmedley story, unfortunately, I’m sure.
Paulson: (sigh) Yeah, I did.
Nissen: That’s all right, it needs to be done.
Paulson: It did, we talked about it.
Nissen: The romp up to Havasu with the [unclear 231:14].
Paulson: I’ve told him more disaster stories. I went through several of ’em.
Nissen: You’ve had a fair number of disasters.
Paulson: I didn’t tell him that one. I just had a lady that was diabetic.... No, that wasn’t the one. Yes it was! See, I can’t even remember my own trips!
Steiger: Got out there and her sugar got off?
Paulson: Yeah. Well, she dropped her insulin. It was in the ice chest, and she was diggin’ it out down there in the morning, dropped it in the river, and then told me, "I can be okay. I’ll just control with my diet and whatever." But of course in the environment she’s in, it’s a whole different thing.
Steiger: This was early on?
Paulson: Yeah, it was above Phantom. I went by Phantom with her. Never would do it again, but not knowin’, I went by. Actually got to Elves, everybody was hikin’ up Elves. She was settin’ on the boat with me and all of a sudden she just (crash!) goes down, you know. "Oh, holy shit!" She went into a lack of insulin problem--bad, bad, thought I was gonna lose her.
Steiger: So her breath, she got real sweet-smellin’, I bet.
Paulson: Yes.
Steiger: So she got super-high sugar.
Paulson: Right. Needed insulin.
Steiger: And that’s only insulin.
Paulson: Insulin, that’s it. Couldn’t give her sweets.
Steiger: Nothin’. Nothin’ you could do.
Paulson: Couldn’t get set up, went a little bit below Elves, set up for an evac., could never get nothin’, nobody, no airplanes. Finally Moose Jaw Mason was with me on that trip. He took the people, I said, "Go down to Deer Creek, set up there. See if you can get anything." So he went to Deer Creek, I waited ’til probably four in the afternoon. We were at Elves before lunch. Anyway, I motored down there, and nothin’.
Steiger: And she’s there in a coma on your boat.
Paulson: Yes. Couldn’t get anything at Deer Creek. Couldn’t get a plane, couldn’t get nothin’. Anyway, got dark. A Western trip was there. They had a doctor, I got with him. He actually used it, and I had a nurse or two with me. They gave her some pain-killer type shot that calmed her down.
Steiger: Was she convulsing?
Paulson: Convulsing, everything, goin’ bad, hurtin’, convulsing out though, didn’t know what she was doin’. When they gave her that shot, it calmed her down a little bit. It was dark then. I camped at that beach. Western was camped straight across from Deer Creek, and I went to that next--not the football.
Steiger: Between, where you could get back.
Paulson: Between there and Pancho’s, you know.
Steiger: Yeah, I know the one.
Paulson: Anyway, set up camp there. Middle of the night, nurses came down and woke me up and said, "She’s real bad, we gotta do somethin’ else. Somethin’. Don’t know what." I went up and looked at her. She was bad, goin’, I doubt, out, but going out. Anyway, I walked up to the Western camp, and I’m walkin’ around there in the middle of the night, shakin’ people, "Hey!" And they’d look at me and go, "Ahhh!" I’d go, "It’s all right, I’m not attackin’ ya’, it’s okay for Christ sakes. I need to know where the doc is." And they finally told me, and I got him, and he went with me back down there. He looked at her and said, "Man, you’ve got about eight hours, max. She’s outta here, she’s gone, she can’t live." So I don’t know why I took her with me, but I did. Took her and the doc and a nurse and her husband and a swamper, I guess.
Nissen: Took Jaw.
Paulson: Jah, that’s right--that guy from Australia.
Steiger: This is the middle of the night?
Nissen: Moose Jaw.
Paulson: Just barely startin’ to get light. Moose Jaw stayed there.
Nissen: I thought you took Moose Jaw.
Paulson: No, I took the Australian guy. I didn’t make Moose Jaw.
Steiger: ’Cause he’s gotta run the rest of the trip.
Paulson: Yeah, he’s gotta bring the rest of the people. Anyway, went down to Havasu. Looking in hindsight, I should have probably left her there, but went down to Havasu and was hikin’ out to the village to get to a phone. The Western people that next morning were able to get....
Nissen: [unclear]
Paulson: Yeah. And then they sent a helicopter in to them at Deer Creek. They told them what the problem was, they went back to the South Rim, got insulin.
Steiger: They got a signal mirror?
Paulson: Yeah, signal mirror. Radios weren’t workin’ or couldn’t get anybody.
Nissen: You didn’t have radios [unclear 235:19].
Paulson: I’ve used ’em, where they actually worked. Anyway, got down there, I was walkin’ out of Havasu, the helicopter came right down the canyon, right in the canyon. I knew what it was for. Went down and got her and got her out. And then she was in intensive care for a long time. Almost died, but she did make it, I believe--last I heard.
Steiger: She was okay, yeah.
Paulson: But close. [unclear] couple hours.
Nissen: [unclear] lost the motor goin’ through Upset.
Paulson: I didn’t lose a motor, but I was tryin’ to make a right-hand cut, to not shake anybody up, and Christ, I went into the hole--sideways.
Steiger: Well, yeah. (chuckles)
Nissen: Add a little [unclear].
Paulson: Would have been much better to be left.
Steiger: Ah, we didn’t need to do that.
Paulson: Didn’t need that, no.
Steiger: We’ll cut that out.
Paulson: Oh well.
Steiger: Oh man, yeah, those life-or-death ones....
Paulson: Yeah, get your attention.
Steiger: Now Joann, you’re Joann....
Paulson: Nissen.
Steiger: Spell me that name.
Nissen: It’s N-I-S-S-E-N. And I apologize for arriving in the middle of something.
Paulson & Steiger: It’s all right.
Nissen: Yeah, but it changes the dynamics.
Paulson: We’re about done. We’ve been goin’ for hours.
Nissen: He’s lookin’ for relief.
Paulson: I don’t know what else to say.
Steiger: Wolf is lookin’ for relief. I’m sittin’ here torturin’ him.
Paulson: Lew keeps sayin’, "You got more, you got more." I said "I’m empty!" (laughs)
Steiger: No, you forget. There’s all those things. It amazes me how much.... I used to think I would remember all this stuff, but you don’t. A lot of times it’s good to have somebody....
Nissen: When you print stuff in the Quarterly, of these oral histories, what’s your percentage?
Steiger: It varies. (recording paused) If you don’t mind. If you do.... Okay, this is Joann. Joann is telling this story about this flip that.... (refreshments arrive) Oh, good! I’m rollin’ here, we’re sittin’ here takin’ a little break, and Joann has started tellin’ this story about the Kevin Sanderson flip where we’ve got a picture of this that we’re lookin’ at, and this is where the boat went left over right. And you were talkin’ about you were on this trip, and this is a picture that we’re lookin’ at here, that Joann took. You were talkin’ about these guys that were in the front, and you’re talkin’ about how it was Walter and....
Nissen: Walter Trotter and Mary Harrington were in the bathtub--Mary being in front. And when Walter realized what was happening, he threw her free. So she become conscious that she’s in the water and is just totally embarrassed that she fell off.
Steiger: She didn’t even realize that he had thrown her?
Nissen: No, she didn’t pick that up at all. I’m trying to recall how many times Mary had been down prior to this, but this was not the first time.
Steiger: Can we see ’em in this picture?
Nissen: Well, you can see legs. This is Mary here, with her leg up in the air. Walter’s right here. So it takes place shortly--obviously a moment after that.
Steiger: He pitches her clear.
Nissen: Yeah. And he’s done some diving, so he felt pressure.... He stayed with the boat. He felt pressure that he felt was equivalent to thirty feet underwater. I don’t know.
Paulson: I wasn’t there either. I know he’s a big guy, and he went down.
Nissen: Well, he didn’t actually stay with the boat, but when the boat went over--and as we know, it’s a right-hand flip--at some point--I don’t know exactly what the hydraulics did, but he was pinned between the boat and the rock, and of course the boat pivoted, so then went down motor first. So it actually hit the rock, pivoted, and went down.
Steiger: And he was between the boat and the rock?
Nissen: Yes. But he was a very big man, and very, very strong. We could tell you Walter stories ’til the cows come home, but that’s....
Steiger: I guess if he had the presence of mind to throw his sweetie clear of the boat....
Nissen: He’s had a dozer roll on him, that he was driving. So this is a man who all his life lived in Big Sur, which explains a little bit.
Steiger: A surfer?
Nissen: No, he wasn’t a surfer. That was before [surfing became popular]. Anyway, when he lived there, the road wasn’t through. I mean, as a child. Anyway, and then the four folks that were on this right-hand side, I believe Brian was the fourth one back, but I’m not actually sure of that. He flushed up right at Donner’s boat. Of the two couples on this side, the left side of the boat, one of these gals was a little bit hung up in some of the ropes. She believes God has a red beard, because there was a moment where the boat lifted up in the wave, and Kevin had flushed in there someplace, and he jerked her out. Of course Shane didn’t trust his life jacket, so he was on top right at the beginning. We felt that he never got wet, he just sort of ran around with the boat.
Steiger: He was the swamper?
Nissen: Yeah, he was the swamper.
Paulson: Not gonna get in that water!
Steiger: No! (laughter)
Nissen: And then this fourth person back on the left, Kenny Wright, stayed with the boat. The fellahs had the strength to get Walter up, did not have the strength to get Kenny up through Little Lava, and he hung on and took quite a bit of water. But did you tell him....
Paulson: I told him Kenny was the one that was mainly hurt, of any of ’em.
Nissen: Yeah, the most impacted by the water intake. But just the two-boat group flipped the boat.
Steiger: Back over?
Nissen: Uh-huh.
Steiger: Yeah.
Paulson: That wasn’t when the park service came that day. That must have been the second one.
Nissen: That was the one with Whale, wasn’t it?
Paulson: Yeah, that was the second one.
Nissen: The first one?
Paulson: No, the second one, I thought. The first one was nobody. Whale did help.... We went through that already, but that was--it had to all be the second one, then.
Nissen: And it was the smaller unit.
Steiger: So we remember Whale bein’ there, even after he’d flipped his own, came back.
Paulson: I think we were first and they were second--whatever, however that worked. We ended up with an upside-down.... Of course their flip-over was easy, but they helped us flip this back over.
Nissen: Well, Walter, who I had already described as very strong, really wasn’t at full strength. Kenny didn’t have much of anything left. And I don’t know how many women there were, but it was kind of interesting that we were able to get it over. But the kind of funny thing on the side, Mary, who’s the first one, her brother was here. Actually, my brother was on this side too. And John’s first thought was--because they had just filled this small ice chest with beer--"Oh my God, the beer!"
Paulson: Dammit!
Nissen: Priorities being priorities.
Steiger: Gonna lose that [unclear 243:03].
Paulson: I just loaded it up that morning!
Steiger: It’d been draggin’ in the river up until then, and now he just put the beer on ice?
Nissen: Yeah, it was cold.
Paulson: Shit!
Steiger: For the long day down to.... Now we’re getting’ the good stuff!
Nissen: Second in priority was, "Oh my God, Mary’s cameras!," because she had very nice cameras. Then the third was, "Oh my God, Mary!" his sister. Mary said, "I always felt very proud to be in the top three." (laughter) And so do have her movie film of Donner’s run, the left-hand run, through. And then she took the camera over, and was taking a picture of this wave, and you could see it building and building, and then breaking. It would build and build.
Paulson: Yeah, we discussed that, actually.
Steiger: Yeah.
Nissen: I actually have copies of that film, which I hope to put together for the GTS thing, because I’ve never actually put it in a video form. It’s still a Super 8.
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: Oh, yeah, that’d be good. You know, all that film, it’s really good archival stuff. Film will last forever. The video....
Nissen: Well, I’ve got the film I’d be happy to donate, because I’ve also got....
Steiger: What’d be good would be to make some kind of transfer and get it digital. Take care of that. But that film could go in a library or somethin’.
Nissen: Well, I’ve got the ’83 through.... I was on a trip with--it was quite funny, actually--Mark Bates was the lead, and we had four or five lead boatmen, who all wanted to see the river. We left out in 88, and I think by the time we went through Crystal, it was 7467, somethin’ like that. I guess Butch was.... Rhonda was the second boatman.
Steiger: Now wait a minute, are you talkin’ 1983?
Paulson: Yeah, I jumped to ’83. I do have that film.
Steiger: And you’re talkin’ about goin’ through Crystal at 70,000 [cfs]?
Paulson: Well, we walked. They only were allowing--on the motor trip they were only allowing....
Steiger: Yeah. No. Just that I was there in the middle of that, when it was 72. It was 70,000 on the way up when it was the worst--72,000. And then it went up to 90 and it washed it out.
Nissen: Yeah. Well, I was somewhere between 74 and 77 when we went through.
Steiger: Oh, nineteen....
Nissen: No, cubic feet per second, is what I meant.
Steiger: Oh, you knew it that close?
Nissen: Well, Kim Crumbo was stationed there, and I think he was gettin’....
Steiger: What it was.
Nissen: Yeah. I think by the time we got to Diamond, it was 64 or ’5, something like that. Everybody was sort of in contact, and knew what was going . That was actually the film that....
Steiger: For the GTS?
Nissen: But this film is also, we’ve got that. Actually, you have it, it’s on the video that’s here.
Paulson: Yeah, but where’s that video? I think Breck’s got it--I think.
Nissen: The original has not been shown, it’s just been copied from. You have a copy of that.
Paulson: Yeah, I’ve got that Deer Creek flashin’, which is I like that.
Steiger: This year?
Paulson: No, that was clear back in.... It’s one I actually took. I took a Super 8 camera one year--just one year--thought I’d take all these pictures. And I happened to be at Deer Creek when it flashed, big time flash.
Steiger: So you have a year of movies.
Paulson: Yeah. I was camped across. We’d hiked it and got back, and it rained, but we didn’t think that much about it. And I just barely got over to camp, and man, it flashed--big time flashed.
Steiger: Did you have a little wind-up camera?
Paulson: No, it was a battery.
Nissen: I’ve got that on a DVD format. I did put that in. Although I personally have not looked at it. I can ship it to you.
Steiger: Oh, I’d love to see it.
Nissen: Well, it’s got this footage, and it’s got the flip that Jerry was on.
Paulson: Sanderson?
Nissen: Yeah, the [unclear 247:10] one. And it’s got Deer Creek, and it’s got the old Crystal with Schmed and Stick.
Steiger: You’ve got a movie of that?! Oh! man, that would be.... I haven’t seen even pictures of the old Crystal for years.
Nissen: We took three different films. Mary had some film, I had some film, and you had copies. Put them together in one film that has been changed over to a video format, and then subsequent to that, I had that put in a DVD format. I’ll be happy to send it.
Steiger: That would be great. And if you wouldn’t mind, when it felt appropriate--I don’t know how you’d feel about it, but if you could just put a copy in the library.
Nissen: I don’t have a problem with that at all. I think that stuff needs to be saved.
Steiger: I shouldn’t transcribe all of this, but....
Nissen: Well, those of us who are maturing are beginning to realize....
Paulson: Maturing? We said old.
Steiger: Then there are some people that are just gettin’ older. (laughs)
Nissen: Lew’s still young.
Nissen: I’m older than both of you guys, so I can say this.
Steiger: Nah, you’re not older than me.
Nissen: I’ve got my Medicare card. I don’t know if that qualifies.
Steiger: Well, maybe so. Then there’s mileage. Gotta account for that.
Nissen: Well, that’s true. You appreciate the fact that this stuff goes into some kind of archives at this point.
Steiger: I was just tellin’ Wolf, when we set out to do this project that was one of the first things I figured out. Because I got sort of accidentally assigned to it, and it was like, "If I just run around and record all this stuff, it’ll just sit on my shelf, and nothin’ will ever...."
Nissen: Yeah, it needs to go [somewhere].
Steiger: I gotta find a place. And so it was the Cline Library at NAU. But they make you sign away all the.... They can’t make it public unless you give ’em permission to, so they have all these hoops you gotta jump through to do it.
Nissen: I don’t foresee any kind of problems with that. I just think these are the kinds of things.... Especially in this trip coming off, and you’ve got all these different age groups, and you talk about things. And I was on a trip a few years ago with Tony Rosenburg, and he asked me when my first trip was. I said, "1970." "(gasp) When they burned wood!" Kind of like I came over in a covered wagon. So yeah, I mean, there’s a whole....
Steiger: I got one started with Stuart Reeder [phonetic]. We haven’t finished it yet. We just got barely started.
Nissen: There’s hours and hours.
Steiger: Yeah. Well, Stuart’s grandparents, or maybe his great-grandparents, were Mormons. They were from England, and they came over here on account of their faith, and they were among the people that wheeled there stuff out here in a wheelbarrow from the East, clear across the country. Walked, pushin’ their stuff in a wheelbarrow!
Paulson: My family did the same thing.
Steiger: No kiddin’?
Paulson: Yup.
Steiger: No kiddin’?
Paulson: Yeah. In fact, my sister has....
Steiger: So the Paulsons came from England?
Paulson: Denmark.
Steiger: On account of Mormonism?
Paulson: Yup. Came across on one of the last sailing ships, before they went to steam ships. And I don’t know from where--from Missouri, somewhere--St. Louis, somewhere--they walked it, draggin’ their stuff.
Steiger: To Richfield?
Paulson: Yes. They got up there and then they got assigned where to go, and that’s where they got sent. This is my dad’s side of the family. My mom grew up in Caineville, which is Capitol Reef, at the very edge of Capitol Reef, goin’ towards Hanksville. That’s where she grew up. Then they got together. It’s a long story, Mormon story.
Steiger: That’s good! [unclear]
Paulson: My sister has a chest thing. That’s all that’s left of what they drug across. Like a chest that you put stuff in, like a pirate’s chest.
Steiger: Like a cedar chest.
Nissen: We saw wheel tracks at Barton’s.... I walked up there....
Steiger: This is on the San Juan?
Nissen: Yeah, two days ago.
Paulson: You can still see ’em. You know how that is over there. You go up there.... I went into the Hole-in-the-Wall thing from that side, and the tracks are still in the sandstone, all that stuff.
Nissen: Well apparently.... I can’t even say it. The Coombs Ridge....
Paulson: Combs.
Nissen: Combs Ridge, yeah--it wasn’t comin’ out--took more animals--they lost more livestock in that climb-out than they did in Hole-in-the-Wall, surprisingly enough.
Paulson: Yeah, I don’t doubt that.
Steiger: But that’s just to put it all in perspective. So your grandparents? Great-grandparents?
Paulson: Oh man, I don’t know how far back--probably more than that.
Nissen: It’d be the 18....
Paulson: Forties? No, fifties.
Steiger: Well, great-great-grandparents then.
Paulson: I’d have to look at the dates. Joann’s seen it, she did all the genealogy of it.
Nissen: Well, I did for my family, which is totally irrelevant to this whole thing, because my family ancestry on my dad’s side is Danish. We were on the thumb part of Denmark, so it’s attached to Germany, if you will. And they left because the border floated--depending on who was in power in Germany, they would take a little bit of Denmark periodically. Same thing happened in Italy with Switzerland. We have a lot of Swiss where I lived. Same thing happened with them. But the Danes were first--which I have to remind the Swiss all the time. But anyway, they immigrated because they were expected to speak German in school. The men were expected to serve in the Germany military. And they didn’t want that, so when circumstances--they weren’t Mormons, they were Lutherans. But I mean they left and they all sailed over.
Steiger: But your people, what happened? They got missionaries hooked up with ’em?
Paulson: Yeah, I’m sure. In fact, they sent ’em over there. That’s the first thing they started doin’. Exactly.
Nissen: Better life than....
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: I just can’t imagine people just walkin’ across all that.... Just America, wide open spaces, no roads, walkin’ across that country. (phone rings, recording paused) You sparked us off there on a pretty good tangent.
Nissen: He needs a lot of prodding.
Steiger: Me too! I just blather on and try to accidentally stumble onto somethin’ intelligent (laughs) to say. Sometimes [unclear 254:36]. But boy, I tell you what, that’s the fun thing about oral history. You think about comin’ from a time where people are walkin’ out here on foot. And we started out talkin’ about how you guys came to Page. And it was your sister?
Paulson: Yeah, sister came here.
Steiger: Because they’re tryin’ to build a town to support these guys buildin’ the dam. I mean, to think about that time, when this was nothin’.
Paulson: Yeah, they needed some infrastructure, they needed some things. They put out contracts.
Nissen: Startin’ out.
Paulson: Right.
Steiger: And now here we are. It’s funny, talkin’ to Tim Whitney, he remembers workin’ up here. He started out where he was workin’ for Tony Sparks.
Paulson: I remember Tim well.
Steiger: When Tony got bought out, Tim came up here.
Paulson: Well, him and Sanderson, they bought at the same time, exactly.
Steiger: And Whitney was tellin’ me this story about one of his fondest memories about ’83 was sittin’ there.... The way he told it is he’s in there in the boat house, and Bill was workin’, and Bill gets a six-pack and says, "C’mon, let’s go look at the dam," when it was high. And whoever was workin’ around there in the boathouse, everybody got in the van, and they drove in there, went down the tunnel. And he said there was so much water comin’ down through the tunnel, he remember that he had to just have the windshield wipers goin’ all the time, just ’cause that tunnel was leakin’ so bad. Which is interesting, and here they almost lost the dam and all this stuff.
Steiger: Oh, they did come close.
Nissen: And using the plywood to raise the spillway.
Steiger: Yeah, all that stuff.
Nissen: That doesn’t make sense.
Steiger: But here we are, now we’re sittin’ around this table in 2007, and we were sayin’, "We might live to see these lakes dry up."
Paulson: Yeah, it’s possible.
Steiger: I mean, it’ll be the next....
Nissen: The next generation [unclear 256:57].
Steiger: We might see it in the next ten or fifteen years it might happen. Hard to think it would go a whole century without some kind of a wet cycle.
Nissen: It’s happened before.
Steiger: Yeah, the way this is goin’ here. If the lake dries up, that’s gonna be aggravating for river runnin’! (laughter)
Nissen: That’s one way to put it.
Paulson: Very hard. Very hard to run.
Steiger: I don’t know what the strategy would be.
Paulson: I don’t either.
Nissen: Portage.
Steiger: Yeah, rubber boats. Never mind the dories.
Paulson: Back like Cataract: You’ve either got real high kick-your-ass water, or you’ve got nothin’.
Nissen: Were you on that real low trip with Don Diamond and Don Mason?
Paulson: I don’t think so.
Nissen: Oh, okay, cancel that.
Steiger: But those years, you’ve definitely seen your share of low water, too, huh?
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: In 1977, or whenever that was.
Paulson: Exactly. The lowest I can remember, the lowest was bein’ at Lava when the rocks that make the ledge are out of the water. I’ve got a picture of it.
Steiger: And you were runnin’, and you were able to run through that?
Paulson: We ran snouts down the right side. Hoss, again, was with me on that trip, I remember.
Steiger: You were rowin’ snouts?
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: Oh, my God, at that....
Paulson: He got hung up in that eddy before the rock.
Steiger: Before the black rock, got stuck over there. (laughs)
Paulson: Yeah, exactly. (laughter) In the eddy. (laughs) But yeah, it was really low. And I thought the ledge was a ledge, but it’s actually a series--you’ve probably seen that--of two or three rocks.
Steiger: I’ve never seen it that low, but I’ve heard people say there’s two or three rocks, it’s not one big....
Paulson: Yeah, there are. I thought it was one big like rock out there, but it’s actually got some breaks in it.
Nissen: Hermit’s a ledge--that’s what I’ve been told.
Paulson: Yeah, this is two or three big rocks out there in the middle.
Steiger: And that was that year, you think?
Paulson: That was in November. I can’t remember what year. I know it was an October, November run. I don’t remember what year. You know, late, when they’d shut the water down. Of course we’ve talked many times about the fluctuations. This was just low, they went down to nothin’. I don’t know why.
Steiger: I can’t believe that you got through there in snout rigs. How the hell did you do that?
Paulson: Yeah, I don’t know either, but we did. We bounced through it, just down the right side. There was enough water, obviously, to let us....
Steiger: Not [just] in Lava, I mean the whole way. I mean, what else? There’s gotta be places....
Paulson: I remember Upset was bad. I also remember comin’ into Lava, above there, above--oh, [expletive] from Stairway, down. I mean, you’re kind of followin’ the real channel. The river is dry on both sides of you, and you’re just kind of followin’ this meandering little channel down through there, through the rock. I remember that.
Paulson: Also there by Tanner Rapid, in that area, same thing, you’re kind of following through some channels, just to go through there. But yeah, we were able to punch those snouts through, and I can’t even remember any disasters. I’m sure Horn Creek probably scared me terrible, bad, bad, bad.
Steiger: Far right--no water on the left.
Paulson: Yes, exactly. So who knows.... I probably, I’m sure, because I did it more than once, tried right-to-lefts there, in those snouts, and don’t think I ever made it.
Steiger: I can’t even imagine right to left in one of those.
Paulson: I think the best thing--and the horns are stickin’ out of the water....
Steiger: [unclear 260:14] snout, had to be.
Paulson: Just drop it off the horns, whatever you can get through there, and bounce through and take your hits.
Steiger: Take that one hit, as opposed to all....
Paulson: Yes, exactly. Then there’s that one rock down there, too, that you hit the front of the frame on. Low, low water.
Steiger: Well, you had to get good to do that.
Paulson: I don’t know. Like you were talkin’ about, the pushing and that. You guys have perfected that a lot more than we did. All I knew, I’m tellin’ ya’, was downstream ferry. That’s it, basically.
Steiger: I never knew.... I mean, it took me forever to figure it out. And Dories taught.... Finally I.... It just.... And I learned.... Well, pushin’ was good, ’cause you could see where you were goin’, and stay in the current. But this whole thing about, "No, it’s about what’s the water doin’ on your hull?"--it wasn’t until I started runnin’ dories that I got that in my head, and I realized, "Well, this is the same on any boat you’re runnin’." But it’s just, "Which way is that water goin’ against your hull? And how much, and to what degree is that occurring?" I mean, all those things. Boy, that’s just everything.
Paulson: Yeah, exactly.
Steiger: But it took me forever to figure that out.
Paulson: You know, there was low water, and I can remember when they came out with the new park service boat, that 37-footer, first one I’d seen of an "S" type rig that was 37. They were doin’ the Rainbow Bridge thing, and the judge from Salt Lake said Lake Powell’s going to.... They were dumpin’ water, dumpin’ water, high water, 40,000-some--dumpin’ it because the water was....
Steiger: Oh, that was ’80.
Paulson: Was that when it was? I don’t remember the year.
Steiger: Wasn’t it? Does that make sense?
Paulson: Yeah, it does.
Steiger: Pretty late in the game.
Paulson: Yes.
Nissen: No water backed up under the bridge, and that was the.... I mean, that was the idea. The lake not under the bridge.
Paulson: Yeah, and so they were dumpin’ water, big time. Exactly. So we were goin’ really high water. Then they came and said--while we were on the river, the judge said, "Stop it, it’s not right." And they just shut the gates, man. While we were on 40,000, it went to 5,000 or whatever. I remember that park service bulletin--and there were only four or five people there, and it was a hundred yards from the water, whatever.
Nissen: They never flew the corridor to tell anybody.
Paulson: No! They just stopped it--done--stopped--down. Amazing. That was probably ’79, ’80, somewhere in that ball park.
Steiger: I did a trip, my first trip ever, I came down as a passenger. And my dad was in Congress, and he brought me down. It was just me and him. We hiked in and we got on an ARR trip. And there was somethin’ goin’ on then. And this is the only trip he ever did.
Paulson: It’s the only trip he ever did?
Steiger: Yeah, I [messed] up. But he had to helicopter out in 1971 ’cause there was some brouhaha about Rainbow Bridge. And he flew out and he got with the Secretary of the Interior, and they went over and they looked at it. Big deal. And then he helicoptered back in. I always thought that was kind of comical. But there was some big issue.
Paulson: That wasn’t the same one, ’cause....
Steiger: No, this was that other one. I always meant to get him down again, and I....
Paulson: Never did, huh?
Steiger: Nope. Then he had a stroke and couldn’t do it. But I always wanted to drag him down in a little boat.
Paulson: Yeah, exactly.
Nissen: (to Paulson) Your dad never ran with you?
Paulson: Nah. Would have liked to have got him. My dad died in ’77, I think.
Steiger: My dad was always.... Without him, I never would have got here. But he was always like, "Okay, runnin’ the river again? Didn’t you do that already? Aren’t you done with that?" (laughs)
Nissen: "Are you sure?"
Steiger: I wanted to show him what I was up to.
Paulson: Our mother was like that, more than.... I mean, "Aren’t you ever gonna get a real job? You can’t do this forever. You’ve gotta go do somethin’ after this."
Nissen: "When are you gonna grow up?"
Paulson: Yeah, "When are you gonna grow up? My God, you’re thirty-some years old."
Nissen: And here we all are, still wondering the same thing.
Paulson: Exactly, still doin’ it. I remember tellin’ her, "I’ll do this all my life, Mom, that’s just the way it is. Whatever I’m doin’, I’ll still be somehow, some way, involved with the river thing."
Steiger: Do you go to church?
Paulson: Hell, no, haven’t done that since I was a kid.
Steiger: I guess you couldn’t be.
Paulson: Oh, you could. They do it all the time. There’s Jack Mormons all the time.
Nissen: Well, he shows up at weddings and funerals.
Paulson: Weddings and funerals. No, I fell out of that a long time ago--structured religion.
Steiger: Was that before you ever got to the river, did that ever have anything to do with it?
Paulson: I fell out of it before then--as soon as I left home, basically. Out of my Mom’s sight, "I’m done with that!" She tried to be a good Mormon, she did. She tried hard at it. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I’m not one to judge any of that stuff. If people want to believe, let ’em believe whatever they want to believe. I hope it worked out for her. She’s gone now. I hope some of it that she believed all her life, worked--but who knows.
Steiger: We were talkin’ about it up on this thing that we just did.
Paulson: (to Nissen) They just spread Fred and Carol’s ...
Steiger: ... ashes.
Nissen: Ohhhh. Well, you said you were gonna be at Vermilion Cliffs, but without any preface, and so I didn’t [unclear].
Steiger: Well, we went up there. We had to, as per Fred’s instructions, we had to spread some of him off the top of the Paria Plateau, lookin’ down on.... So we had to go up there and find this one spot, which was pretty good.
Nissen: That’s great.
Steiger: But we were talkin’ about it, just about religion and stuff, and where you go, if you get to heaven, or where you end up once you leave outta here. And somehow the topic came up, "Well, if you know a good Mormon...." You don’t even have to do anything yourself, if you can just get them to line it out for you....
Paulson: Hang it, ’cause they’ll take care of you later. (laughter) "Poor dumb bastard couldn’t do it on his own--I got to."
Steiger: So it’s like I’d better make friends with somebody who’s got a line in there.
Paulson: That’s right. Yeah, I haven’t denounced it, because I’m stayin’ close, just in case. (laughter) What the hell, they might be right.
Nissen: Cover all those bases! (laughter)
Paulson: It might be right, I don’t know.
Steiger: That was news to me, that you didn’t have to actually repent yourself, or do any of that. If you even just had a good friend....
Paulson: Yeah, you gotta die, and then they’ll baptize you.
Steiger: Put the fix in for ya’, yeah.
Nissen: Whether you want it or not, you’re gonna in some cases.
Steiger: Well, I guess we ought to.... I’m trying to think of some other intelligent topic to cover here.
Paulson: I know we’ve been over a lot--I think. I don’t know if any of it’s any good.
Steiger: It’s all good to me. But it helps to be able to shut your eyes and kind of picture it as it was. I sure can. I can remember.... Boy, I remember doin’ that trip with you, and I remember the whole Sanderson crew back then. And it’s fun, just lookin’ at these pictures: Roger and Giant and Hoss and Derald, and the Diamond girls when they were young--all those guys. Just the whole outfit.
Paulson: Yup, exactly.
Steiger: Quite a chapter.
Nissen: Well, and that’s why it does need to be recorded, before it is lost, and the memories fade.
Steiger: Well, we’re gonna lose 99.9 percent of it anyway.
Nissen: Yes, but you’re gonna get some.
Steiger: Yeah, a little somethin’s better than nothin.
Nissen: Yeah.
Steiger: I had forgotten--I know that we talked about this when did that trip, just about you seein’ three flips, but I had even forgotten that. I had in my mind, "Oh, yeah, there was a Sanderson boat that went over, and then there was an ARTA boat...."
Nissen: Sanderson boat that went over, and then there was [another] Sanderson boat that went over.
Steiger: There was an ARTA.
Nissen: Well, the ARTA in Soap Creek was one of the first ones, wasn’t it?
Steiger: They tipped one over in Soap Creek?
Nissen: Yeah. Then there was the classic Life magazine picture.
Paulson: I just remember the Lava picture, yeah. I don’t remember the Soap Creek one.
Steiger: I don’t remember hearin’ about the Soap Creek one.
Paulson: Well, hey, we believe.
Steiger: I’m just tryin’ to feature it.
Nissen: The water. The hung some.... I don’t....
Paulson: Water always pushes you over somehow.
Steiger: Yeah.
Nissen: And that had to be early seventies.
Steiger: I remember Tour West at Cave Springs.
Paulson: Right, I know that one.
Steiger: I remember Tour West at President Harding.
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: Tour West at Crystal.
Paulson: Yeah, Tour West.
Steiger: Canyoneers at Crystal.
Paulson: Did Western roll one at Crystal in the high water?
Steiger: Western at Crystal.
Nissen: In the very high water, because they did the end-over, didn’t they?
Steiger: Yeah, Western at Crystal.
Nissen: The loop.
Steiger: Mark Wynham, Nankoweap. Myron Cook, Fort Lee, tipped one over at Bedrock.
Paulson: Yes.
Nissen: Oh, yeah.
Steiger: Arizona River Runners, there was a kid named Russell, who was a pilot, and he was down there with Kim Claypool, and he got a kink in his gas line, and he tipped over on Bedrock, and didn’t lose nothin’.
Paulson: No kidding? I think that’d be a bad spot.
Steiger: Well, he was just so anal--he was really meticulous in....
Paulson: Tying everything?
Nissen: Had it all tidy.
Steiger: He was tied in so good they didn’t lose hardly anything--I mean, almost nothin’.
Nissen: We lost the entire kitchen.
Steiger: Well, Kim Claypool kind of got ahold of him, and everybody helped. And what I heard there was that they took the tubes off, but they righted that boat. I’m glad to hear this, because if I ever see it again, I’m not gonna bother takin’ the side tubes off.
Paulson: Hell no, you don’t need to.
Steiger: Well, they took the side tubes off, but they got it back right-side up. They put the tubes back on and they went on. Usually when people go over it, it was like "End of story, we quit!"
Paulson: Well, my thing was, I thought we were probably the first one, I thought we were probably gonna have to take the side tubes off, but hell, let’s give it a try, see what happens first, before we take ’em off. And it worked, so....
Steiger: Were people uphill? Did you get ’em on the beach?
Paulson: They were uphill, yeah. We had like four or five people get a pivot point, hold it. Because if you just start pullin’ it, you’re just gonna drag it. You have to have somebody....
Steiger: And then you had everybody straight uphill, and you didn’t have mechanical advantage or nothin’?
Paulson: No. Had uphill some, but then pullin’ on it, with people pushin’ on the bottom part, pullin’ on it until you get.... Once it starts goin’, and bites in on this side, then the other guys can go help pull, too. And then you go.... And it’s slow. I mean, you just get a foot or less at a time: "Pull! 1-2-3, pull!" You know, that kind of thing.
Steiger: Were you tyin’ it off?
Paulson: We had it tied across.... No, we didn’t tie it off, we just hung onto it.
Steiger: Wow. Boy, that’s [unclear 271:53].
Nissen: I don’t remember it taking any--for that third flip--and great amount of time.
Paulson: No, I’d say, what, a minute or two. But what I’m trying to say, you just don’t grab it and ...
Steiger: ... throw it over. No, but you get a bite.
Paulson: Yeah, a bite, and then another bite, and another bite, until.... (aside about leaving)
Steiger: Yeah, okay, I’m gonna stop this, just because we’ll record that [unclear].
Paulson: Yeah.
[END OF INTERVIEW at 272:14 minutes]

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Steiger: (aside about equipment) There we go. I think I’ve got it. Okay, this is the River Runners Oral History Project, and this is gonna be Part 2 of an interview done with Wolf, Don Paulson. This is Lew Steiger, and it’s November 6, 2007, and we’re just startin’ on our second little SD card here. We’re pickin’ up about three or four .wav files into this thing. We were talkin’ about the Sandersons. When we ran out of the card, we were just talkin’ about those guys and their boats, talkin’ about.... What was it? You were sayin’ Rod Sanderson was a high-scaler when he met Norman Nevills.
Paulson: That’s the way I understand the story. And they were all workin’ at Marble dam site, and Norm came by, and somehow that got Rod’s interest or he went on that trip with him. I don’t know exactly, but somehow Rod, I think, went with Norm down the river, and that’s how they got doin’ it, got involved with the river. Now, from that, I’m sure Norm was rowin’. We’ll have to talk to Jerry Sanderson. (aside about equipment) Then they put together those little, like, CrisCraft-type boats and modified ’em to run the river with motors. I think they ran like two 30- or 35-horse Evinrudes. (aside about equipment) I remember them running--when they’ve talked stories about when they ran their hard-hulled boats with the motors on ’em, and did their trips. They had those Evinrudes, and they had shear pins, and they would go through--if they ever hit a rock, it would shear a pin. I remember them talkin’ about Hance, and they could take a prop out by breakin’ a shear pin at the top of Hance, and have it changed by the time they got to the bottom.
Steiger: (laughs) In the little boat?! Yeah, that would be pretty good.
Paulson: They got pretty good at pullin’ ’em up and changin’ that pin. That is one of the reasons, when I came along they went to those Mercurys, was they had like that slip clutch thing where you didn’t have the shear pin.
Steiger: You didn’t have to mess with that.
Paulson: Right. You were gonna break your prop, or prop blade or somethin’, but you would still have some momentum--or still some power. Or you could spin the whole spindle.
Steiger: No, you were gonna break the prop.
Paulson: Probably the prop blade was gonna break, probably.
Steiger: But you wouldn’t mess up the power head or the shaft.
Paulson: Yeah, exactly. When they would shear a pin--and they could shear a pin just dinkin’ a little rock or doin’ whatever, and then they were out of power. So that’s why they went with those Mercurys, the way I understand it. Those Mercurys were great, I loved ’em, they were good motors. I liked runnin’ ’em.
Steiger: They were bomber!
Paulson: Yeah, I liked runnin’ ’em, they were good. One person could actually pick ’em up and you could change it out. You know, they were a little heavy, but now the motorsrs they run today, they’re too heavy, the four-strokes.
Steiger: You know, it’s funny, I remember people would say, "Why do you have such a little motor? Why don’t you have a bigger one?" And I would say, "Well, because this is about all I can lift."
Paulson: Yeah, all of us.
Steiger: "And besides, it’s all we need." And then we got bigger. Partly, we were runnin’ faster trips.
Paulson: Yes. And a lot of that I see now. People want short trips.
Steiger: Well, they want ’em shorter. We went to these 25s, and they were really loud, but the power wasn’t so bad. And then they made us go to the four-strokes, and everybody got these Honda 30s, which are really quiet.
Paulson: Oh yes, they are. I’ve ran ’em.
Steiger: You can’t lift ’em, you can’t tilt ’em worth a shit.
Paulson: Uh-uh.
Steiger: And it’s funny, ARR, Arizona River Runners, on account of that, they went to 20s. They outfitted their whole fleet now....
Paulson: With 20 Hondas?
Steiger: Yeah. But you know what’s weird? When you’re like on a rowin’ trip or somethin’, you hear those comin’ a lot worse than the 30s.
Paulson: You do?
Steiger: Yeah, it’s somethin’ about it, it’s a higher frequency. They’re not louder, but they’re more noticeable.
Paulson: But you can hear ’em more, yeah. Wow.
Steiger: Obnoxious. I hate to say it, but they are, a little bit. You just hear ’em comin’ a lot longer. And I think it’s because the 30 is a three-cylinder.
Paulson: Instead of a four?
Steiger: Well, no. I think the 20.... It’s a four-stroke motor, but it’s three cylinders, and the 20 is two, and I think that the 20 just turns a lot more rpms or something. I don’t know what the heck the deal is. It’s a little bit of a step backwards, in terms of the sound. But they like ’em ’cause you can lift ’em.
Paulson: Exactly.
Steiger: And it’s not as much as a 30.
Paulson: Do they have a jackass, or do they just tilt?
Steiger: They’ve got a jackass.
Paulson: I miss the old jackass--I do.
Steiger: You mean the Wilderness’ just tilt?
Paulson: Yes. That’s it.
Steiger: That’s okay. That’s all right by me. They’ve got a transom?
Paulson: Yeah. Well, a cheater bar on ’em, whatever you want to call it. It gives you a little leverage to tilt it, you know.
Steiger: But they did away with the jackasses?
Paulson: There’s no jackass, yeah.
Steiger: That’s okay by me, because it’s faster, if you’re doin’ a turn-around or somethin’.
Paulson: It is. My thing was, when you got into shallower water, you could feather that jackass up and down a little bit--you could. Now you’re either in or out, that’s it.
Steiger: I liked that about a jackass, but the ones that I’ve always run don’t ever get the motor up, all the way out.
Paulson: No, they don’t.
Steiger: You couldn’t get ’em all the way out of the water. You’d get ’em to this far. I used to like to go backwards.
Paulson: It was a lift and tilt.
Steiger: Yeah. But if you’re backin’ down Hance, there were two little rocks that you’d have to just tilt over. And with your straight transom, that was no big deal--and your little 20-horsepower motor. But with a jackass and the 30, I quit doin’ it. I quit backin’ down shit, just for that. Well, specifically Hance, because it was too hard to get the motor up.
Paulson: Exactly. It is. I ended up breakin’ one off at Badger one time. I got down there in the really low water, and everybody was stacked up, up above, and all the boats, row boats, everybody, was settin’ there, and I was just real cocky at the time, thought I could put that boat anywhere I wanted to, and when ahead and run, and didn’t make it, and got spun around and backed onto a rock. Before I could get it lifted and tilted, the rock lifted the back end of the boat and smashed the motor and broke the whole lower unit off.
Steiger: That was the problem! If you’re gonna hit one backwards--bye bye!
Paulson: It got me--got me bad--gone, gone, history.
Steiger: Broke those thumb screws and just....
Paulson: Yeah, just gone. Exactly. So yeah, there was problems with ’em. The thing that was good about ’em was you could lift ’em and feather ’em in shallower water. The times that that really came into play was usually pullin’ out from a lunch beach type thing.
Steiger: Parkin’.
Paulson: Parkin’, yeah, or anything like that. Hardly ever in a rapid--just when you were tryin’ to maneuver around, tryin’ to get out of a lunch beach.
Steiger: You know it’s funny, those times when you go down there and make just the killer run, and just grease it, nobody’s ever there! (laughs)
Paulson: Exactly. That’s a fact. They never are.
Steiger: Those times when everybody’s standin’ around watchin’....
Paulson: I agree, they never are there.
Steiger: They’re never there when you do it good, and they’re always there, with the cameras, if somethin’ bad’s gonna happen.
Paulson: Yep.
Steiger: Seems like for me that’s the deal anyway.
Paulson: That’s a fact, it is.
Steiger: That’s been my experience. If somebody’s got a video camera or a big, good still camera, and they’re gonna go down and take pictures, those are the ones.
Paulson: That’s the ones you’re gonna get, yeah.
Steiger: That’s when you get trouble. That’s a really neat scrapbook.
Paulson: Robin Scarmazo [phonetic] made that up for me. Runs trips for Wilderness, has for years. Schoolteacher, and runs some trips.
Steiger: Well, it sounds like the evolution of Wilderness, it sounds like things are goin’ along pretty good.
Paulson: They seem to have a lot of respect for the old ways. They know their roots, they know they came from Sanderson. They have a lot of respect for that, and a lot of respect for [the fact that] it evolved from there. I think they consider themselves mostly the boatmen from that thing. I know Wilderness is not a family-owned operation like some of the others are now. You don’t notice that, when you work with them. I mean, it’s just workin’ with guys like me and Breck, and even Butch and some of these other guys that have been around forever. And that’s all you know, that’s what you are. June Sanderson was there, Patti Ellwanger was there, you know. Billy around all the time.
Steiger: June’s still involved?
Paulson: June retired. She’s not involved.
Steiger: Oh yeah, Patti’s moved up to her slot.
Paulson: Patti’s doing her job now. But yeah, I think it’s still a lot of older-type people around there, that came from the Sanderson era, and Hatch, all that. It’s a good thing. They seem to do okay.
Steiger: I think it’s been a real blessing, just to be involved in the business.
Paulson: That’s what it is. And that’s what I think all boatmen.... I know that there’s always some of that "my company’s better than yours." And there are differences in the way everybody does stuff, and everybody looks at things, but just to be part of what the whole program is, and bein’ the king, and then runnin’ a boat, and takin’ people through, no matter what outfit you work for, is a good thing, I think. We’ve always fought to.... And I’ve done a lot of both, motors versus oars type stuff. And there was always that little kind of hardheadedness--you know, mine’s better, whatever I’m doin’. To me, it was just people down there doin’ trips, takin’ people through the canyon, and either way is a good way. As long as the people are enjoyin’ it, and they’re havin’ a good time, heck, that’s what it’s all about.
Steiger: I agree. Anymore it’s not so much motor.... There was that time of motor versus rowin’. Now it’s private versus commercial.
Paulson: Oh, yes, and I see that now.
Steiger: That’s the new motor-rowin’....
Paulson: Yeah, everybody, all the privates. I mean, goddang there’s millions, they’re everywhere.
Steiger: I don’t know that we need to get started on that, although it’s a little ironic. Well, I don’t know, I didn’t contribute to the new plan at all, I didn’t have any input.
Paulson: I didn’t either.
Steiger: And then I groused about it when they came up with it. I was mad at ’em, because I thought.... I was really mad at ’em, because I thought, "You can’t increase overall use 30 percent and think you’re doin’ a good thing for the Grand Canyon." I thought they ought to take some away. Or not take away from the commercials, but I always wanted them to find a way to buy the littler companies out, and move those days over. But that didn’t happen, and I was all mad at ’em. But last year, I gotta say, I did four trips, and there was only one time, one major [cluster-expletive] that I ran into.
Paulson: Was it? So that’s good.
Steiger: Yeah. I mean, there was one time everybody was stacked up at Deer Creek, and there were 250 people at Havasu. We avoided it. But that was a one-shot deal, and other than that, things were pretty good.
Paulson: That’s been okay, because I thought it would be more like that all the time--I did.
Steiger: I did too. And I don’t know, because I didn’t really get to go in the shoulder season, which I’d like to.
Paulson: I’ve heard some of these guys talk about whether they’ll go down with six or eight people and take a major camp, and you’re comin’ in with....
Steiger: Well they do that, and there’s this guy, Tom Martin, who’s cast himself.... He’s written a guide book for these guys.
Paulson: For the privates?
Steiger: Yeah. And there’s this big ol’ book, and in there they encourage you to go down. They encourage these guys to go down and take the biggest possible camp.
Paulson: They did?
Steiger: Yeah!
Paulson: What the hell’s that all about?
Steiger: And there are these guys.... You know, the way the park’s got it, you can do an eight-person or a sixteen-person trip. Those guys are adamant that just ’cause you’re on a little trip doesn’t mean that you should cheat yourself out of the good camps. It’s really aggravating.
Paulson: The guys that I’ve been around, it is to them, I know.
Steiger: I think most people--they’re gettin’ this out of the guide book, and I think you ought to just take what you need, in terms of a camp. And there’s lots of camps for eight people, for cryin’ out loud.
Paulson: Yeah. I know they seem to be struggling with their.... Because they still do some changeovers, exchanges, which I don’t know [unclear 203:39].
Steiger: What I notice about the canyon is there’s definitely.... Do you notice the beaches being smaller?
Paulson: Oh yeah, I think they definitely are.
Steiger: That’s what jumps out at me. You know, the water’s lower.
Paulson: Yes, it is.
Steiger: So there’s more available. And I like low water. Seems like now there’s like a shoulder season, spring and fall, it’s 6,000-12,000 [cfs], and somewhere it’s 10,000 to 18,000. For me, I much prefer the shoulder season. There’s more rocks and stuff, but it’s manageable. Actually, rowin’ a dory, there’s a lot more rocks, but it’s less pushy, it’s not so huge, and what I really like about it is you can always find a camp somewhere.
Paulson: Oh yeah.
Steiger: Whereas when it’s 18,000 or 20,000, it’s hard to find ’em.
Paulson: You’re real limited, yeah, you are. I agree.
Steiger: And I don’t remember it ever bein’ that hard. Do you remember, like when we started, I don’t remember it ever bein’ that hard to find a camp. I remember you could always find somethin’ somewhere. I mean, there were certain stretches where you didn’t really think of it, but there was like a lot more camps above Havasu. There were little camps--Sinyella and places where we’d go, that aren’t there anymore.
Paulson: Last Chance is about gone, there’s not much there.
Steiger: Yeah, and Upset.
Paulson: Yeah, exactly. I’ve even noticed Upper National seems to be--from what we were used to in our era--I mean, it’s not the same [beach?].
Steiger: Littler. It’s still campable, but it ain’t....
Paulson: It’s not like that big white beach that we used to pull into.
Steiger: No. That big white beach that I got a two-boat ARR trip stuck on, where the water was a hundred yards away! (laughter)
Paulson: Yeah, that beach. That’s the same one. (laughter) That’s it.
Steiger: The change of the month. Oops.
Paulson: Yeah, I have noticed that for sure. It’s changed, it’s evolved, the whole canyon has, you know. This is just in our short time. God, think of all the millions/billions of years it’s taken to do this.
Steiger: And you think of the Indians, too.
Paulson: That’s too much for me.
Steiger: Look at the stream of humanity that’s flowed through there. It didn’t start with us, by any means.
Paulson: No. Wasn’t it after ’72 or whatever it was--wasn’t the total user days 16,000? And then they bumped it up to 21,000 or somethin’, and now it’s higher than that, 25,000 or so, or 30,000?
Steiger: Oh, in terms of total number of people? I tell everybody it was 12,000 per year when they put in the quota.
Paulson: Okay. And then they bumped it up?
Steiger: My standard spiel, and it’s been this way for a few years--I mean, it’s sort of--I mean, I’m tellin’ everybody now it’s about 30,000--28,000 to 30,000 people per year goin’.
Paulson: I know from the time these things were happenin’, there’s a lot more people down there now on boats than there was back in those days.
Steiger: Way more. Well, this new plan....
Paulson: And we didn’t see very many privates. You’d see a few, but it wasn’t.... You know, my theory on that is people didn’t have boats, for one thing. I mean, the river whole thing was just startin’. A lot of people didn’t even know what it was. But the people that did, didn’t have boats to go do private trips with. You either worked for an outfitter, or you borrowed an outfitter’s boats to go do trips. Now everybody rents boats, you can find boats anywhere you go.
Steiger: Yeah. It was boats, or the know-how.
Paulson: Yeah, there was neither one.
Steiger: I think a lot of people--I look back at the kind of people that we were gettin’, like I would be willing to bet you that today, if your average group, if you had ’em all stranded over there above Lower Lava on the left, you would just not even say to ’em, "swim over."
Paulson: Because they aren’t gonna do it.
Steiger: Well, they wouldn’t make it.
Paulson: Oh yeah, they wouldn’t make it. The wouldn’t come through it.
Steiger: Do you remember specifically the people that did that?
Paulson: No, not much.
Steiger: Were they hardier?
Paulson: I think in general our groups were hardier in those days. Now, those people in particular, I can’t.... They were just normal people. I definitely think in general, yeah, that the people were tougher, they could handle stuff more.
Steiger: I think it was just a sort of a different.... It was a different slice of society back then, ’cause it was just a little more adventurous.
Paulson: Well, it was, and they were there for an adventure.
Steiger: Not that you can generalize, because you can’t, ever.
Paulson: No, you can’t. There’s still some. One of the things--I mean, I never worried about, because I told them to jump in the water, that they were gonna sue me ’cause I did that, you know.
Steiger: That thought never crossed your mind.
Paulson: Nowadays you’d have to think of that. Man, if somethin’ goes wrong, I, and the company, and everybody else could get in big trouble here. My whole thought was just to get everybody back together.
Steiger: "I gotta get my trip together," yeah. "And this is the only way we an do it."
Paulson: Of course now, [unclear 209:23] softer.
Steiger: And if you’d have left them there....
Paulson: Oh, I couldn’t! And then I had people downstream....
Steiger: They’d have been there at least overnight.
Paulson: Yes, at least overnight--at least.
Steiger: With nothin’.
Paulson: With nothin’, not even a sleepin’ bag.
Steiger: And maybe days.
Paulson: Yes. And I didn’t know when the next trip was comin’. I knew it wasn’t at least until the next day. And if there was somethin’ that day.... Probably was, but I don’t know that. So my whole thing was, "I gotta get ’em from there to here, to get the middle group of the people that had been on my boat; and then we still got another guy downstream somewhere." So I had ’em in three spots, you know.
Steiger: Plus the upside-down boat.
Paulson: Yes, and an upside-down boat somewhere down there that the guy’s freakin’ out on. If we don’t get to him tonight, he’ll go drown himself or somethin’, because he thinks he killed a bunch of people.
Steiger: Whew! God!
Paulson: I just know that there’s a lot more "man you can’t do that, because if something happens, everybody’ll go down." It’s like, "Ah, hell."
Steiger: Boy, what an amazing thing to have to go through. I mean, for you, just to see this thing go--the first one....
Paulson: Yeah, I was. I can still see it.
Steiger: You must have just been dumbfounded.
Paulson: I can still see it right here in my head, right now, goin’ up and over. Yeah, I can. "What the hell?! Why did that happen?! That’s not supposed to happen!"
Steiger: Workin’ for Grand Canyon Dories.... I went to work for Martin just before he sold the company, and worked a bunch of years for them guys. And then I jumped ship and still do a few for them, but I’m doin’ a lot more GCE. But I had it in my mind, Dories, learnin’ from Kenton Grua and those guys, it was like goin’ to war, and the big thing was, "Okay, if a boat goes over in Lava, we are not going through Lower Lava. We are gonna get ahold of this thing, we gotta get everybody out before there, you gotta get the boat right-side up." Which is hard.
Paulson: Oh yes.
Steiger: I mean, especially if you’re just rowin’. Usually, if you’re runnin’ right, you can’t get in until below the little black rock that sticks out way down there. So you got between there and Lower Lava to do whatever it is that you’re gonna do.
Paulson: Right, exactly. And that’s at least halfway, or maybe more, down there.
Steiger: More. So there’s so little time. But GCE and other rowin’ or private guys, they don’t seem to think about that. You’re more apt to go down through there, for sure.
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: And if you hadn’t thought about it in advance, there’s just no time. You had to really have a plan. And motoring, I never had a plan for that.
Paulson: Well, and you don’t. And you wouldn’t today. And I wouldn’t.... Other than after it happened, I just know better than to take off after the upside-down boat. I don’t care now, even with more people down there, I’m still gonna start gettin’ the.... I’m not gonna chase the upside-down boat and leave people stranded behind me. I gotta get them, and then deal with what I got when I catch up to it. I thought I could shove him into shore there, probably above Little Lava on the [left]. I thought I could maybe get him there. Well, when I couldn’t get him there, by that time we’re both.... I mean, I couldn’t get back to that point. We’re gone.
Steiger: It’s pushing you down.
Paulson: We’re gone, he’s pushing me down, he’s in front of me. Then I thought, "Well, I’ll try to get him into the eddy here by the beach." Couldn’t make that. Even went around that next turn. And I went, "Man, I can’t go no farther. I can’t get you in." Every time I got a.... And all the weight’s hangin’ down here, which makes it.... ’Cause I’d pushed boats around before, but upside down, the weight....
Steiger: Upside down, a little more drag.
Paulson: Yeah, it was harder to get in a point where I could just shove him, you know. I couldn’t catch a point just right to push him over. The next thing I know, we’re goin’ on down, and I go, "That’s it, we’re gone." It was me, Helen was with my on my boat, and him, and that’s it. Everybody else was gone. I’m goin’, "I gotta go back and get some people. Good luck."
Steiger: There’s some stories about rowboats, that kind of thing at Crystal.
Paulson: Yeah. And I always thought Crystal would get even a motorboat.
Steiger: Which is has.
Paulson: Yup, it has. And I know some got hung up on the wall there at Slate, I guess.
Steiger: Yeah. There’s been a Canyoneers boat went over on that thing--I think on that thing.
Paulson: Against the wall?
Steiger: Yeah, on that point over there, far left.
Paulson: Yeah, that’s bad. Man, you get on that wall, man, it’s bad.
Steiger: There again, I was talkin’ to Allen Wilson, doin’ this oral history on an ARTA trip. He was an old ARTA boatman. He was with Peter Wynn and a bunch of old ARTA boatmen on a private trip, and they were camped at Schist Camp, kind of all jacked up about Crystal, and they watched this Canyoneers boat go by, drive by ’em, and they got down there, and there’s the guy upside down [unclear 214:39].
Paulson: Yeah, exactly.
Steiger: Well, I’m just tryin’ to think of an intelligent question here. When you were workin’ there at the power plant, did you think about the river?
Paulson: Yeah. You know, when I first left the river and went out there, it was a real shock. I went from "Wolf" to "Don" or "Donnie," and these people out there had no clue. I mean, they knew about the river, but didn’t care.
Steiger: Didn’t know what that was, or what you’d done.
Paulson: No. Didn’t matter to them what or who I was, or what I’d done, or anything. And it was an ego bust. I went from bein’ a Grand Canyon boatman to just bein’ a normal guy workin’ shift work out here. I had to fight myself, to make myself stay there for the first, especially, year or two. It was a culture shock for me, for sure--from all the years of workin’ the river and doin’ that thing, to comin’ into this kind of an environment was tough for me, it was. I did it because I felt like I needed to do it. It paid a decent wage, but mostly I got some medical and some retirement benefits out of it, which I felt like at that time in my life I needed. I was thirty-six when I went out there, and felt like I needed to do that, you know. Just a time in my life.... I just couldn’t see myself staying "a guide." If I could have seen myself moving into some management or some other kind of a position with the river outfit, I would have stayed. But I was afraid I was going to [stay] a guide, and I could tell my back was breakin’ down. I didn’t know what other medical problems I might have. I was afraid I might get to be around fifty and broke down, and then what the hell do you do? "We can’t use you, you can’t work." So now what am I gonna do? So that was a big incentive into my takin’ that job out there. I knew I could still do some trips, a trip or two type thing every year, which I did. And so it actually worked out okay. But the shock of goin’ to a job like that after bein’ a river guide was pretty big. I had to force myself to eat it, to take it. And I don’t regret it, I’m glad I did it. If I would have maybe stayed with the river, it would have probably worked out, and I could have possibly--that might have worked. I don’t know, because I didn’t go that route. I think it probably would have, I think I could have probably stayed involved, totally involved with the river. But I didn’t know how that was all going to fall into place. I knew Sandersons was sellin’, and I didn’t know where I was gonna fit into their program. I just didn’t know. So I took that job, and I’ve never regretted doin’ it. Hell, it’s been okay.
Steiger: I think it is tough, especially if you’re not lined up for management.
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: I mean, that’s been.... I know exactly that. It’s interesting because here.... I mean, I’m fifty-one, my knee hurts.
Paulson: Yes, it does. I had to have my knees redone, my back.
Steiger: I’m not in near as good a shape as I was. And you can see the writin’ on the wall, but you get.... I mean, for me, I’ve done some other things, and had some successes and some failures....
Paulson: Well, this is probably a good thing for you. I mean, I don’t know what kind of livin’ it is.
Steiger: Oh, it’s not financially [rewarding]. It hasn’t been all that good yet. And I didn’t even.... I mean, it hasn’t been, and I don’t know that it ever will be, but it’s been a great privilege. Sometimes I gotta say, especially lately, I’m like, "What the [expletive] am I doin’ runnin’ around recording everybody else’s life for? What about my own?"
Paulson: When’s yours gonna get recorded? It is, isn’t it? I thought I’d seen that in....
Steiger: They put it in there that I’ve gotta do one. It was pretty funny. They put that in there, and I said, "It’ll be a cold day in hell!" (laughs) I’m not puttin’ all that shit on tape!
Paulson: Exactly!
Steiger: And I was stallin’ off. I guess it’d be Brad McHugh who’d talk to me. And I was like, "No [expletive] way."
Paulson: No way, I’m not gonna do that. I agree.
Steiger: And then I finally.... Honestly, I was like, "Well, that’s not gonna happen, ’cause I’m not doin’ that." But then I got to thinkin’ about it and I thought, "Well, you little [expletive], you can’t...."
Paulson: Do everybody else....
Steiger: Yeah, you can’t run around and ask everybody else to do it, and you’re not willin’ to cough up a little somethin’.
Paulson: Well, I’m probably like a lot of your people. I got that letter, I thought, "Well, what the hell, I don’t have anything that I can say."
Steiger: Oh no, you always were on my list. I just honestly--I’ve been tryin’ to not have it cost too much money, try to be responsible, and just try to work ’em in where it’s handy, where it doesn’t cost too much. And the whole selection process over the last several years was totally haphazard. But you always, honestly--and I’m not sayin’ this just to suck up to you, in my mind you were somebody I looked up to when I started.
Paulson: Well, thanks, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Steiger: I always saw you as really one of the people I really admired ...
Paulson: Well thanks Lew.
Steiger: ... who figured it out back then--one of the senior boatmen of the various companies.
Paulson: Yes, right.
Steiger: That’s the truth. And as far as what the hell we’re doin’ here, I don’t know. Just writin’ our names on the wall. (phone rings, recording paused) I’m just blathering on here, but I’m doin’ it just because.... I’m thinkin’ maybe we would stumble onto somethin’ of value.
Paulson: I don’t know....
Steiger: I guess we were talkin’ about just gettin’ old and all that. It’s been hard, our generation. You got out and got it figured out. There’s quite a few of us that didn’t quite figure it out, and we’re hittin’ the wall now. It’s gonna be interesting. I mean, I’m hangin’ on by my fingernails, and I want to, I want to keep doin’ it as long as I can.
Paulson: Oh, I know.
Steiger: But I can see the writin’ on the wall.
Paulson: That’s it, that’s the problem.
Steiger: And some companies are better than others, as far as what they’ll do to take care of you. But it’s hardly in anybody’s.... I don’t know of hardly any company where they’ve really got it laid out for you to retire. They’ll take care of you while you’re doin’ it, but....
Paulson: While you’re there, exactly.
Steiger: But when you are too stove-up to do it....
Paulson: I know. And I don’t know of anybody that’s doin’ that, that will help ’em when.... It’s just a tough deal. It’s a tough deal for boatmen. I mean, you get doin’ that job, and it’s such a great thing, and "I can do this forever!" and "It’s so much fun, I get to meet all these new people, and there’s so many cool things goin’ on! I take passengers and they tell me I’m great."
Steiger: Yeah! That’s for sure!
Paulson: It’s hard to go away from that, it is. I don’t know, I just felt maybe I.... I needed a bigger security blanket. I didn’t dare just let my life keep goin’ on, with that, because I was too afraid of what was gonna happen down the road. I look back on it, I don’t know, it would have probably worked out fine, and that’d be just dandy. Or maybe it wouldn’t have. I might be, who knows? But I chose to go get a job that gave me some benefits, and I didn’t have to worry about down the road so much, you know.
Steiger: Sittin’ here right now today, that’d be pretty hard to argue with. I think it really would be.
Paulson: At the time, I didn’t know. At the time I was like, "Man, what have I done? I didn’t need to do this. But I did." Here’s Joann. Let’s shut down. (greetings exchanged)
Nissen: Donner, don’t forget to tell about the trip with Elzedo [phonetic], with all the gay guys. (laughs)
Paulson: No, I’m not goin’ down that road.
Nissen: Oh, that is so classic! We were telling some stories last night that were funny.
Paulson: I’m sure.
Nissen: I’m sorry.
Steiger: You think not? (laughs)
Paulson: We picked up a trip at Phantom, oar trip, we were rowin’, and there were sixteen guys, and it turns out they were all gay. And this was back in the day when there was not....
Steiger: This is you and Elzedo and....
Paulson: And Tony Kazan and Paco--Jack Clifford [phonetic].
Steiger: (laughs) Oh yeah, there’s a bunch of kind, sensitive....
Paulson: Yeah, exactly, sensitive boat boys. And I was trip leader, and when they all found out, God, I remember Paco or one of ’em come runnin’ over to me, "Wolf! Wolf! Hey, the guys on my boat are all gay!" I said, "Well, they’re all all gay. What the hell you want me to do?" (laughter) "Just deal with it!" But one of the things we did do--this can’t be in the book or anything--we were at Crystal and Paco come up and said, "Wolf, do you mind if I run first?" And I said "God, I don’t care who runs first. Go!" He said, "All right, I’m gonna go drown me some [unclear 224:19]." He went and ran the Maytag and flipped.
Steiger: Oh, he did?!
Paulson: Yeah. The two or three guys ridin’ with him were okay, but he got beat up pretty hard.
Steiger: He wasn’t really tryin’ to do that?
Paulson: Yes! He wasn’t tryin’ to kill ’em, but he was tryin’....
Steiger: He was tryin’ to flip.
Paulson: I think he was tryin’ to flip, yes. Serious!
Steiger: That seems a little counterproductive for one’s own ass.
Paulson: Well, it was! He got hurt. The other guys made it all right. Just stuff not for....
Steiger: Oh yeah, there’s stuff we wouldn’t want to....
Paulson: But anyway, I didn’t know, we didn’t know. To me, I thought, "What the hell, it don’t matter." I mean, I wasn’t worried about ’em attackin’ me. It didn’t matter.
Steiger: How’d it turn out in the end?
Paulson: I think they were okay.
Steiger: Not one of your favorite trips?
Paulson: Not one of my favorites, but for me, I asked them about how or why, or "Why are you guys...." Or, "what happened?" It was kind of eye-opening for me a little bit. For Alzedo and Paco and them, they just wanted absolutely nothin’ to do with them. They would get ready and call, "Dinner, girls!" at night, and stuff like that--just harrassin’ ’em. [unclear] "Leave ’em alone."
Steiger: I remember doin’ a trip where we had a bunch of gay guys from I don’t know where--New Orleans or something, someplace like that. But it was just a lower-down trip, we just got ’em at Whitmore. And half of these guys were these gay guys.... Or no! they were like house painters from San Francisco, or somethin’ like that. And then we had a bunch of rednecks from South Carolina. We had these two different camps.
Paulson: Oh, I didn’t have to deal with both of ’em.
Steiger: And the funny thing was.... And everybody was all standoffish. But then we went down there to 220 and we had this volleyball game, and it was the gay guys against the rednecks, and they had a few crew members salted in on either side, and that was pretty good. It ended up with a fairly happy ending.
Paulson: Good. Good.
Steiger: Yeah, we don’t need to probably....
Paulson: Yeah, don’t need to go down that road. That’s what I told her.
Steiger: Yeah, [don’t need to] dwell on that one. We were sittin’ up there talkin’.... I’ve talked to so many people I can’t even remember who’s told me what--but sittin’ around, our last little Fred mission, just talkin’ about some of the strange things where people flipped out. John Stoner told this story about he’s down there on a--maybe it was even a Wilderness trip. Anyway, he’s down there workin’, and he’s across from Deer Creek, and this private trip rows over to him and says, "We need to evacuate somebody. It’s this woman, and she’s flipped out on us. Will you take her?" And Stoner’s like, "Well, I can’t take her, our boats are full. We don’t have any room. Absolutely both boats are maxed out." And the guy said, "Well, would you take her? Maybe you could evacuate her. Because I’ve got her over there, she’s duct taped. Her mouth is duct taped shut and she’s tied up." (laughter) And Stoner said, "Well, you know...."
Paulson: That happened on a Wilderness trip. I don’t know if.... They were at Saddle Canyon, though.
Steiger: Julie Munger told me, but she thought it was Nankoweap.
Paulson: Just this year.
Steiger: Oh! this year?!
Paulson: Did you hear that one?
Steiger: No.
Paulson: Well, same thing.
Steiger: Well, this guy, why they wanted this private lady.... I’ll finish this, and then I’ll get you to tell me your story. She’s sittin’ over there, and Stoner says, "Well, you know it’s gonna cost you a lot of money if you evacuate her. You’ll have to pay for the helicopter and all this." And the guy says, "Well, how much money will that cost?" And Stoner says, "I think it’ll be about $500-$600." This is back then, whenever that was. The guy thinks about it, he paddled over to him in a kayak, and he’s sittin’ there thinkin’ about it, and finally he says, "Well, I guess we’ll just keep her." (laughs)
Paulson: No kidding?! "Never mind." (laughter) [unclear] but I really don’t want it in this thing. EDITING ALERT.
Steiger: Okay, yeah, I know, it probably wouldn’t be professional.
Paulson: But they had a....
Steiger: A psychiatric issue?
Paulson: One of their boatmen’s wives went nuts, off the end, trying to drown herself. They finally captured her. Then she got in the motor well, and then somebody was hangin’ onto her, and then she went over the side of the boat. It was a motor trip. Anyway, before they could get it all under control, they had some duct tape, and they took some sleeping pads and wrapped her up in these pads and stuff, and got an evac.
Steiger: I’ve seen when people lose it, they really do lose it, and they really can. And then there’s no rhyme nor reason.
Paulson: It was tough to deal with. Yeah, man, tough, God dang. I mean, I wasn’t there, but I heard ’em talkin’. Some guys tried to grab her, you know.
Steiger: Julie Munger told a story on that Schmedley trip. Some guy was a psychiatric guy she remembered. This was like mid-seventies.
Paulson: With the gun? Is that the one? Go ahead, I don’t mean to interrupt you.
Steiger: I thought it was a knife.
Paulson: Oh! I think it was.
Steiger: And he flipped out and he was tryin’ to cut the boatman or whatever. He got all claustrophobic.
Paulson: Threatenin’ to kill him and all that stuff.
Steiger: They had to subdue him.
Paulson: Yeah, I think it was too.
Steiger: She said that really brought the rest of the trip together.
Paulson: I’m sure! I’m sure.
Steiger: Made an impression on everybody.
Paulson: Exactly.
Steiger: This is somebody that’s just rowed and paddled all her life, and is about as crunchy granola as you could get. She said that trip was one of her fondest.... She had a wonderful time, loved that trip.
Paulson: Great, really, very good, exactly.
Steiger: There’s so many of ’em, where it seemed like that was where it was workin’.
Paulson: Yeah, exactly.
Steiger: They had a lot more where it seemed like everybody was really happy.
Paulson: Yeah. Right.
Steiger: That was more than one [unclear 230:40] else.
Well, Joann, I don’t know, we’re windin’ down here.
Nissen: I was asking if you were just startin’, or....
Paulson: No.
Steiger: No, we’ve been goin’ for a while.
Nissen: You got the Schmedley story, unfortunately, I’m sure.
Paulson: (sigh) Yeah, I did.
Nissen: That’s all right, it needs to be done.
Paulson: It did, we talked about it.
Nissen: The romp up to Havasu with the [unclear 231:14].
Paulson: I’ve told him more disaster stories. I went through several of ’em.
Nissen: You’ve had a fair number of disasters.
Paulson: I didn’t tell him that one. I just had a lady that was diabetic.... No, that wasn’t the one. Yes it was! See, I can’t even remember my own trips!
Steiger: Got out there and her sugar got off?
Paulson: Yeah. Well, she dropped her insulin. It was in the ice chest, and she was diggin’ it out down there in the morning, dropped it in the river, and then told me, "I can be okay. I’ll just control with my diet and whatever." But of course in the environment she’s in, it’s a whole different thing.
Steiger: This was early on?
Paulson: Yeah, it was above Phantom. I went by Phantom with her. Never would do it again, but not knowin’, I went by. Actually got to Elves, everybody was hikin’ up Elves. She was settin’ on the boat with me and all of a sudden she just (crash!) goes down, you know. "Oh, holy shit!" She went into a lack of insulin problem--bad, bad, thought I was gonna lose her.
Steiger: So her breath, she got real sweet-smellin’, I bet.
Paulson: Yes.
Steiger: So she got super-high sugar.
Paulson: Right. Needed insulin.
Steiger: And that’s only insulin.
Paulson: Insulin, that’s it. Couldn’t give her sweets.
Steiger: Nothin’. Nothin’ you could do.
Paulson: Couldn’t get set up, went a little bit below Elves, set up for an evac., could never get nothin’, nobody, no airplanes. Finally Moose Jaw Mason was with me on that trip. He took the people, I said, "Go down to Deer Creek, set up there. See if you can get anything." So he went to Deer Creek, I waited ’til probably four in the afternoon. We were at Elves before lunch. Anyway, I motored down there, and nothin’.
Steiger: And she’s there in a coma on your boat.
Paulson: Yes. Couldn’t get anything at Deer Creek. Couldn’t get a plane, couldn’t get nothin’. Anyway, got dark. A Western trip was there. They had a doctor, I got with him. He actually used it, and I had a nurse or two with me. They gave her some pain-killer type shot that calmed her down.
Steiger: Was she convulsing?
Paulson: Convulsing, everything, goin’ bad, hurtin’, convulsing out though, didn’t know what she was doin’. When they gave her that shot, it calmed her down a little bit. It was dark then. I camped at that beach. Western was camped straight across from Deer Creek, and I went to that next--not the football.
Steiger: Between, where you could get back.
Paulson: Between there and Pancho’s, you know.
Steiger: Yeah, I know the one.
Paulson: Anyway, set up camp there. Middle of the night, nurses came down and woke me up and said, "She’s real bad, we gotta do somethin’ else. Somethin’. Don’t know what." I went up and looked at her. She was bad, goin’, I doubt, out, but going out. Anyway, I walked up to the Western camp, and I’m walkin’ around there in the middle of the night, shakin’ people, "Hey!" And they’d look at me and go, "Ahhh!" I’d go, "It’s all right, I’m not attackin’ ya’, it’s okay for Christ sakes. I need to know where the doc is." And they finally told me, and I got him, and he went with me back down there. He looked at her and said, "Man, you’ve got about eight hours, max. She’s outta here, she’s gone, she can’t live." So I don’t know why I took her with me, but I did. Took her and the doc and a nurse and her husband and a swamper, I guess.
Nissen: Took Jaw.
Paulson: Jah, that’s right--that guy from Australia.
Steiger: This is the middle of the night?
Nissen: Moose Jaw.
Paulson: Just barely startin’ to get light. Moose Jaw stayed there.
Nissen: I thought you took Moose Jaw.
Paulson: No, I took the Australian guy. I didn’t make Moose Jaw.
Steiger: ’Cause he’s gotta run the rest of the trip.
Paulson: Yeah, he’s gotta bring the rest of the people. Anyway, went down to Havasu. Looking in hindsight, I should have probably left her there, but went down to Havasu and was hikin’ out to the village to get to a phone. The Western people that next morning were able to get....
Nissen: [unclear]
Paulson: Yeah. And then they sent a helicopter in to them at Deer Creek. They told them what the problem was, they went back to the South Rim, got insulin.
Steiger: They got a signal mirror?
Paulson: Yeah, signal mirror. Radios weren’t workin’ or couldn’t get anybody.
Nissen: You didn’t have radios [unclear 235:19].
Paulson: I’ve used ’em, where they actually worked. Anyway, got down there, I was walkin’ out of Havasu, the helicopter came right down the canyon, right in the canyon. I knew what it was for. Went down and got her and got her out. And then she was in intensive care for a long time. Almost died, but she did make it, I believe--last I heard.
Steiger: She was okay, yeah.
Paulson: But close. [unclear] couple hours.
Nissen: [unclear] lost the motor goin’ through Upset.
Paulson: I didn’t lose a motor, but I was tryin’ to make a right-hand cut, to not shake anybody up, and Christ, I went into the hole--sideways.
Steiger: Well, yeah. (chuckles)
Nissen: Add a little [unclear].
Paulson: Would have been much better to be left.
Steiger: Ah, we didn’t need to do that.
Paulson: Didn’t need that, no.
Steiger: We’ll cut that out.
Paulson: Oh well.
Steiger: Oh man, yeah, those life-or-death ones....
Paulson: Yeah, get your attention.
Steiger: Now Joann, you’re Joann....
Paulson: Nissen.
Steiger: Spell me that name.
Nissen: It’s N-I-S-S-E-N. And I apologize for arriving in the middle of something.
Paulson & Steiger: It’s all right.
Nissen: Yeah, but it changes the dynamics.
Paulson: We’re about done. We’ve been goin’ for hours.
Nissen: He’s lookin’ for relief.
Paulson: I don’t know what else to say.
Steiger: Wolf is lookin’ for relief. I’m sittin’ here torturin’ him.
Paulson: Lew keeps sayin’, "You got more, you got more." I said "I’m empty!" (laughs)
Steiger: No, you forget. There’s all those things. It amazes me how much.... I used to think I would remember all this stuff, but you don’t. A lot of times it’s good to have somebody....
Nissen: When you print stuff in the Quarterly, of these oral histories, what’s your percentage?
Steiger: It varies. (recording paused) If you don’t mind. If you do.... Okay, this is Joann. Joann is telling this story about this flip that.... (refreshments arrive) Oh, good! I’m rollin’ here, we’re sittin’ here takin’ a little break, and Joann has started tellin’ this story about the Kevin Sanderson flip where we’ve got a picture of this that we’re lookin’ at, and this is where the boat went left over right. And you were talkin’ about you were on this trip, and this is a picture that we’re lookin’ at here, that Joann took. You were talkin’ about these guys that were in the front, and you’re talkin’ about how it was Walter and....
Nissen: Walter Trotter and Mary Harrington were in the bathtub--Mary being in front. And when Walter realized what was happening, he threw her free. So she become conscious that she’s in the water and is just totally embarrassed that she fell off.
Steiger: She didn’t even realize that he had thrown her?
Nissen: No, she didn’t pick that up at all. I’m trying to recall how many times Mary had been down prior to this, but this was not the first time.
Steiger: Can we see ’em in this picture?
Nissen: Well, you can see legs. This is Mary here, with her leg up in the air. Walter’s right here. So it takes place shortly--obviously a moment after that.
Steiger: He pitches her clear.
Nissen: Yeah. And he’s done some diving, so he felt pressure.... He stayed with the boat. He felt pressure that he felt was equivalent to thirty feet underwater. I don’t know.
Paulson: I wasn’t there either. I know he’s a big guy, and he went down.
Nissen: Well, he didn’t actually stay with the boat, but when the boat went over--and as we know, it’s a right-hand flip--at some point--I don’t know exactly what the hydraulics did, but he was pinned between the boat and the rock, and of course the boat pivoted, so then went down motor first. So it actually hit the rock, pivoted, and went down.
Steiger: And he was between the boat and the rock?
Nissen: Yes. But he was a very big man, and very, very strong. We could tell you Walter stories ’til the cows come home, but that’s....
Steiger: I guess if he had the presence of mind to throw his sweetie clear of the boat....
Nissen: He’s had a dozer roll on him, that he was driving. So this is a man who all his life lived in Big Sur, which explains a little bit.
Steiger: A surfer?
Nissen: No, he wasn’t a surfer. That was before [surfing became popular]. Anyway, when he lived there, the road wasn’t through. I mean, as a child. Anyway, and then the four folks that were on this right-hand side, I believe Brian was the fourth one back, but I’m not actually sure of that. He flushed up right at Donner’s boat. Of the two couples on this side, the left side of the boat, one of these gals was a little bit hung up in some of the ropes. She believes God has a red beard, because there was a moment where the boat lifted up in the wave, and Kevin had flushed in there someplace, and he jerked her out. Of course Shane didn’t trust his life jacket, so he was on top right at the beginning. We felt that he never got wet, he just sort of ran around with the boat.
Steiger: He was the swamper?
Nissen: Yeah, he was the swamper.
Paulson: Not gonna get in that water!
Steiger: No! (laughter)
Nissen: And then this fourth person back on the left, Kenny Wright, stayed with the boat. The fellahs had the strength to get Walter up, did not have the strength to get Kenny up through Little Lava, and he hung on and took quite a bit of water. But did you tell him....
Paulson: I told him Kenny was the one that was mainly hurt, of any of ’em.
Nissen: Yeah, the most impacted by the water intake. But just the two-boat group flipped the boat.
Steiger: Back over?
Nissen: Uh-huh.
Steiger: Yeah.
Paulson: That wasn’t when the park service came that day. That must have been the second one.
Nissen: That was the one with Whale, wasn’t it?
Paulson: Yeah, that was the second one.
Nissen: The first one?
Paulson: No, the second one, I thought. The first one was nobody. Whale did help.... We went through that already, but that was--it had to all be the second one, then.
Nissen: And it was the smaller unit.
Steiger: So we remember Whale bein’ there, even after he’d flipped his own, came back.
Paulson: I think we were first and they were second--whatever, however that worked. We ended up with an upside-down.... Of course their flip-over was easy, but they helped us flip this back over.
Nissen: Well, Walter, who I had already described as very strong, really wasn’t at full strength. Kenny didn’t have much of anything left. And I don’t know how many women there were, but it was kind of interesting that we were able to get it over. But the kind of funny thing on the side, Mary, who’s the first one, her brother was here. Actually, my brother was on this side too. And John’s first thought was--because they had just filled this small ice chest with beer--"Oh my God, the beer!"
Paulson: Dammit!
Nissen: Priorities being priorities.
Steiger: Gonna lose that [unclear 243:03].
Paulson: I just loaded it up that morning!
Steiger: It’d been draggin’ in the river up until then, and now he just put the beer on ice?
Nissen: Yeah, it was cold.
Paulson: Shit!
Steiger: For the long day down to.... Now we’re getting’ the good stuff!
Nissen: Second in priority was, "Oh my God, Mary’s cameras!," because she had very nice cameras. Then the third was, "Oh my God, Mary!" his sister. Mary said, "I always felt very proud to be in the top three." (laughter) And so do have her movie film of Donner’s run, the left-hand run, through. And then she took the camera over, and was taking a picture of this wave, and you could see it building and building, and then breaking. It would build and build.
Paulson: Yeah, we discussed that, actually.
Steiger: Yeah.
Nissen: I actually have copies of that film, which I hope to put together for the GTS thing, because I’ve never actually put it in a video form. It’s still a Super 8.
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: Oh, yeah, that’d be good. You know, all that film, it’s really good archival stuff. Film will last forever. The video....
Nissen: Well, I’ve got the film I’d be happy to donate, because I’ve also got....
Steiger: What’d be good would be to make some kind of transfer and get it digital. Take care of that. But that film could go in a library or somethin’.
Nissen: Well, I’ve got the ’83 through.... I was on a trip with--it was quite funny, actually--Mark Bates was the lead, and we had four or five lead boatmen, who all wanted to see the river. We left out in 88, and I think by the time we went through Crystal, it was 7467, somethin’ like that. I guess Butch was.... Rhonda was the second boatman.
Steiger: Now wait a minute, are you talkin’ 1983?
Paulson: Yeah, I jumped to ’83. I do have that film.
Steiger: And you’re talkin’ about goin’ through Crystal at 70,000 [cfs]?
Paulson: Well, we walked. They only were allowing--on the motor trip they were only allowing....
Steiger: Yeah. No. Just that I was there in the middle of that, when it was 72. It was 70,000 on the way up when it was the worst--72,000. And then it went up to 90 and it washed it out.
Nissen: Yeah. Well, I was somewhere between 74 and 77 when we went through.
Steiger: Oh, nineteen....
Nissen: No, cubic feet per second, is what I meant.
Steiger: Oh, you knew it that close?
Nissen: Well, Kim Crumbo was stationed there, and I think he was gettin’....
Steiger: What it was.
Nissen: Yeah. I think by the time we got to Diamond, it was 64 or ’5, something like that. Everybody was sort of in contact, and knew what was going . That was actually the film that....
Steiger: For the GTS?
Nissen: But this film is also, we’ve got that. Actually, you have it, it’s on the video that’s here.
Paulson: Yeah, but where’s that video? I think Breck’s got it--I think.
Nissen: The original has not been shown, it’s just been copied from. You have a copy of that.
Paulson: Yeah, I’ve got that Deer Creek flashin’, which is I like that.
Steiger: This year?
Paulson: No, that was clear back in.... It’s one I actually took. I took a Super 8 camera one year--just one year--thought I’d take all these pictures. And I happened to be at Deer Creek when it flashed, big time flash.
Steiger: So you have a year of movies.
Paulson: Yeah. I was camped across. We’d hiked it and got back, and it rained, but we didn’t think that much about it. And I just barely got over to camp, and man, it flashed--big time flashed.
Steiger: Did you have a little wind-up camera?
Paulson: No, it was a battery.
Nissen: I’ve got that on a DVD format. I did put that in. Although I personally have not looked at it. I can ship it to you.
Steiger: Oh, I’d love to see it.
Nissen: Well, it’s got this footage, and it’s got the flip that Jerry was on.
Paulson: Sanderson?
Nissen: Yeah, the [unclear 247:10] one. And it’s got Deer Creek, and it’s got the old Crystal with Schmed and Stick.
Steiger: You’ve got a movie of that?! Oh! man, that would be.... I haven’t seen even pictures of the old Crystal for years.
Nissen: We took three different films. Mary had some film, I had some film, and you had copies. Put them together in one film that has been changed over to a video format, and then subsequent to that, I had that put in a DVD format. I’ll be happy to send it.
Steiger: That would be great. And if you wouldn’t mind, when it felt appropriate--I don’t know how you’d feel about it, but if you could just put a copy in the library.
Nissen: I don’t have a problem with that at all. I think that stuff needs to be saved.
Steiger: I shouldn’t transcribe all of this, but....
Nissen: Well, those of us who are maturing are beginning to realize....
Paulson: Maturing? We said old.
Steiger: Then there are some people that are just gettin’ older. (laughs)
Nissen: Lew’s still young.
Nissen: I’m older than both of you guys, so I can say this.
Steiger: Nah, you’re not older than me.
Nissen: I’ve got my Medicare card. I don’t know if that qualifies.
Steiger: Well, maybe so. Then there’s mileage. Gotta account for that.
Nissen: Well, that’s true. You appreciate the fact that this stuff goes into some kind of archives at this point.
Steiger: I was just tellin’ Wolf, when we set out to do this project that was one of the first things I figured out. Because I got sort of accidentally assigned to it, and it was like, "If I just run around and record all this stuff, it’ll just sit on my shelf, and nothin’ will ever...."
Nissen: Yeah, it needs to go [somewhere].
Steiger: I gotta find a place. And so it was the Cline Library at NAU. But they make you sign away all the.... They can’t make it public unless you give ’em permission to, so they have all these hoops you gotta jump through to do it.
Nissen: I don’t foresee any kind of problems with that. I just think these are the kinds of things.... Especially in this trip coming off, and you’ve got all these different age groups, and you talk about things. And I was on a trip a few years ago with Tony Rosenburg, and he asked me when my first trip was. I said, "1970." "(gasp) When they burned wood!" Kind of like I came over in a covered wagon. So yeah, I mean, there’s a whole....
Steiger: I got one started with Stuart Reeder [phonetic]. We haven’t finished it yet. We just got barely started.
Nissen: There’s hours and hours.
Steiger: Yeah. Well, Stuart’s grandparents, or maybe his great-grandparents, were Mormons. They were from England, and they came over here on account of their faith, and they were among the people that wheeled there stuff out here in a wheelbarrow from the East, clear across the country. Walked, pushin’ their stuff in a wheelbarrow!
Paulson: My family did the same thing.
Steiger: No kiddin’?
Paulson: Yup.
Steiger: No kiddin’?
Paulson: Yeah. In fact, my sister has....
Steiger: So the Paulsons came from England?
Paulson: Denmark.
Steiger: On account of Mormonism?
Paulson: Yup. Came across on one of the last sailing ships, before they went to steam ships. And I don’t know from where--from Missouri, somewhere--St. Louis, somewhere--they walked it, draggin’ their stuff.
Steiger: To Richfield?
Paulson: Yes. They got up there and then they got assigned where to go, and that’s where they got sent. This is my dad’s side of the family. My mom grew up in Caineville, which is Capitol Reef, at the very edge of Capitol Reef, goin’ towards Hanksville. That’s where she grew up. Then they got together. It’s a long story, Mormon story.
Steiger: That’s good! [unclear]
Paulson: My sister has a chest thing. That’s all that’s left of what they drug across. Like a chest that you put stuff in, like a pirate’s chest.
Steiger: Like a cedar chest.
Nissen: We saw wheel tracks at Barton’s.... I walked up there....
Steiger: This is on the San Juan?
Nissen: Yeah, two days ago.
Paulson: You can still see ’em. You know how that is over there. You go up there.... I went into the Hole-in-the-Wall thing from that side, and the tracks are still in the sandstone, all that stuff.
Nissen: Well apparently.... I can’t even say it. The Coombs Ridge....
Paulson: Combs.
Nissen: Combs Ridge, yeah--it wasn’t comin’ out--took more animals--they lost more livestock in that climb-out than they did in Hole-in-the-Wall, surprisingly enough.
Paulson: Yeah, I don’t doubt that.
Steiger: But that’s just to put it all in perspective. So your grandparents? Great-grandparents?
Paulson: Oh man, I don’t know how far back--probably more than that.
Nissen: It’d be the 18....
Paulson: Forties? No, fifties.
Steiger: Well, great-great-grandparents then.
Paulson: I’d have to look at the dates. Joann’s seen it, she did all the genealogy of it.
Nissen: Well, I did for my family, which is totally irrelevant to this whole thing, because my family ancestry on my dad’s side is Danish. We were on the thumb part of Denmark, so it’s attached to Germany, if you will. And they left because the border floated--depending on who was in power in Germany, they would take a little bit of Denmark periodically. Same thing happened in Italy with Switzerland. We have a lot of Swiss where I lived. Same thing happened with them. But the Danes were first--which I have to remind the Swiss all the time. But anyway, they immigrated because they were expected to speak German in school. The men were expected to serve in the Germany military. And they didn’t want that, so when circumstances--they weren’t Mormons, they were Lutherans. But I mean they left and they all sailed over.
Steiger: But your people, what happened? They got missionaries hooked up with ’em?
Paulson: Yeah, I’m sure. In fact, they sent ’em over there. That’s the first thing they started doin’. Exactly.
Nissen: Better life than....
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: I just can’t imagine people just walkin’ across all that.... Just America, wide open spaces, no roads, walkin’ across that country. (phone rings, recording paused) You sparked us off there on a pretty good tangent.
Nissen: He needs a lot of prodding.
Steiger: Me too! I just blather on and try to accidentally stumble onto somethin’ intelligent (laughs) to say. Sometimes [unclear 254:36]. But boy, I tell you what, that’s the fun thing about oral history. You think about comin’ from a time where people are walkin’ out here on foot. And we started out talkin’ about how you guys came to Page. And it was your sister?
Paulson: Yeah, sister came here.
Steiger: Because they’re tryin’ to build a town to support these guys buildin’ the dam. I mean, to think about that time, when this was nothin’.
Paulson: Yeah, they needed some infrastructure, they needed some things. They put out contracts.
Nissen: Startin’ out.
Paulson: Right.
Steiger: And now here we are. It’s funny, talkin’ to Tim Whitney, he remembers workin’ up here. He started out where he was workin’ for Tony Sparks.
Paulson: I remember Tim well.
Steiger: When Tony got bought out, Tim came up here.
Paulson: Well, him and Sanderson, they bought at the same time, exactly.
Steiger: And Whitney was tellin’ me this story about one of his fondest memories about ’83 was sittin’ there.... The way he told it is he’s in there in the boat house, and Bill was workin’, and Bill gets a six-pack and says, "C’mon, let’s go look at the dam," when it was high. And whoever was workin’ around there in the boathouse, everybody got in the van, and they drove in there, went down the tunnel. And he said there was so much water comin’ down through the tunnel, he remember that he had to just have the windshield wipers goin’ all the time, just ’cause that tunnel was leakin’ so bad. Which is interesting, and here they almost lost the dam and all this stuff.
Steiger: Oh, they did come close.
Nissen: And using the plywood to raise the spillway.
Steiger: Yeah, all that stuff.
Nissen: That doesn’t make sense.
Steiger: But here we are, now we’re sittin’ around this table in 2007, and we were sayin’, "We might live to see these lakes dry up."
Paulson: Yeah, it’s possible.
Steiger: I mean, it’ll be the next....
Nissen: The next generation [unclear 256:57].
Steiger: We might see it in the next ten or fifteen years it might happen. Hard to think it would go a whole century without some kind of a wet cycle.
Nissen: It’s happened before.
Steiger: Yeah, the way this is goin’ here. If the lake dries up, that’s gonna be aggravating for river runnin’! (laughter)
Nissen: That’s one way to put it.
Paulson: Very hard. Very hard to run.
Steiger: I don’t know what the strategy would be.
Paulson: I don’t either.
Nissen: Portage.
Steiger: Yeah, rubber boats. Never mind the dories.
Paulson: Back like Cataract: You’ve either got real high kick-your-ass water, or you’ve got nothin’.
Nissen: Were you on that real low trip with Don Diamond and Don Mason?
Paulson: I don’t think so.
Nissen: Oh, okay, cancel that.
Steiger: But those years, you’ve definitely seen your share of low water, too, huh?
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: In 1977, or whenever that was.
Paulson: Exactly. The lowest I can remember, the lowest was bein’ at Lava when the rocks that make the ledge are out of the water. I’ve got a picture of it.
Steiger: And you were runnin’, and you were able to run through that?
Paulson: We ran snouts down the right side. Hoss, again, was with me on that trip, I remember.
Steiger: You were rowin’ snouts?
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: Oh, my God, at that....
Paulson: He got hung up in that eddy before the rock.
Steiger: Before the black rock, got stuck over there. (laughs)
Paulson: Yeah, exactly. (laughter) In the eddy. (laughs) But yeah, it was really low. And I thought the ledge was a ledge, but it’s actually a series--you’ve probably seen that--of two or three rocks.
Steiger: I’ve never seen it that low, but I’ve heard people say there’s two or three rocks, it’s not one big....
Paulson: Yeah, there are. I thought it was one big like rock out there, but it’s actually got some breaks in it.
Nissen: Hermit’s a ledge--that’s what I’ve been told.
Paulson: Yeah, this is two or three big rocks out there in the middle.
Steiger: And that was that year, you think?
Paulson: That was in November. I can’t remember what year. I know it was an October, November run. I don’t remember what year. You know, late, when they’d shut the water down. Of course we’ve talked many times about the fluctuations. This was just low, they went down to nothin’. I don’t know why.
Steiger: I can’t believe that you got through there in snout rigs. How the hell did you do that?
Paulson: Yeah, I don’t know either, but we did. We bounced through it, just down the right side. There was enough water, obviously, to let us....
Steiger: Not [just] in Lava, I mean the whole way. I mean, what else? There’s gotta be places....
Paulson: I remember Upset was bad. I also remember comin’ into Lava, above there, above--oh, [expletive] from Stairway, down. I mean, you’re kind of followin’ the real channel. The river is dry on both sides of you, and you’re just kind of followin’ this meandering little channel down through there, through the rock. I remember that.
Paulson: Also there by Tanner Rapid, in that area, same thing, you’re kind of following through some channels, just to go through there. But yeah, we were able to punch those snouts through, and I can’t even remember any disasters. I’m sure Horn Creek probably scared me terrible, bad, bad, bad.
Steiger: Far right--no water on the left.
Paulson: Yes, exactly. So who knows.... I probably, I’m sure, because I did it more than once, tried right-to-lefts there, in those snouts, and don’t think I ever made it.
Steiger: I can’t even imagine right to left in one of those.
Paulson: I think the best thing--and the horns are stickin’ out of the water....
Steiger: [unclear 260:14] snout, had to be.
Paulson: Just drop it off the horns, whatever you can get through there, and bounce through and take your hits.
Steiger: Take that one hit, as opposed to all....
Paulson: Yes, exactly. Then there’s that one rock down there, too, that you hit the front of the frame on. Low, low water.
Steiger: Well, you had to get good to do that.
Paulson: I don’t know. Like you were talkin’ about, the pushing and that. You guys have perfected that a lot more than we did. All I knew, I’m tellin’ ya’, was downstream ferry. That’s it, basically.
Steiger: I never knew.... I mean, it took me forever to figure it out. And Dories taught.... Finally I.... It just.... And I learned.... Well, pushin’ was good, ’cause you could see where you were goin’, and stay in the current. But this whole thing about, "No, it’s about what’s the water doin’ on your hull?"--it wasn’t until I started runnin’ dories that I got that in my head, and I realized, "Well, this is the same on any boat you’re runnin’." But it’s just, "Which way is that water goin’ against your hull? And how much, and to what degree is that occurring?" I mean, all those things. Boy, that’s just everything.
Paulson: Yeah, exactly.
Steiger: But it took me forever to figure that out.
Paulson: You know, there was low water, and I can remember when they came out with the new park service boat, that 37-footer, first one I’d seen of an "S" type rig that was 37. They were doin’ the Rainbow Bridge thing, and the judge from Salt Lake said Lake Powell’s going to.... They were dumpin’ water, dumpin’ water, high water, 40,000-some--dumpin’ it because the water was....
Steiger: Oh, that was ’80.
Paulson: Was that when it was? I don’t remember the year.
Steiger: Wasn’t it? Does that make sense?
Paulson: Yeah, it does.
Steiger: Pretty late in the game.
Paulson: Yes.
Nissen: No water backed up under the bridge, and that was the.... I mean, that was the idea. The lake not under the bridge.
Paulson: Yeah, and so they were dumpin’ water, big time. Exactly. So we were goin’ really high water. Then they came and said--while we were on the river, the judge said, "Stop it, it’s not right." And they just shut the gates, man. While we were on 40,000, it went to 5,000 or whatever. I remember that park service bulletin--and there were only four or five people there, and it was a hundred yards from the water, whatever.
Nissen: They never flew the corridor to tell anybody.
Paulson: No! They just stopped it--done--stopped--down. Amazing. That was probably ’79, ’80, somewhere in that ball park.
Steiger: I did a trip, my first trip ever, I came down as a passenger. And my dad was in Congress, and he brought me down. It was just me and him. We hiked in and we got on an ARR trip. And there was somethin’ goin’ on then. And this is the only trip he ever did.
Paulson: It’s the only trip he ever did?
Steiger: Yeah, I [messed] up. But he had to helicopter out in 1971 ’cause there was some brouhaha about Rainbow Bridge. And he flew out and he got with the Secretary of the Interior, and they went over and they looked at it. Big deal. And then he helicoptered back in. I always thought that was kind of comical. But there was some big issue.
Paulson: That wasn’t the same one, ’cause....
Steiger: No, this was that other one. I always meant to get him down again, and I....
Paulson: Never did, huh?
Steiger: Nope. Then he had a stroke and couldn’t do it. But I always wanted to drag him down in a little boat.
Paulson: Yeah, exactly.
Nissen: (to Paulson) Your dad never ran with you?
Paulson: Nah. Would have liked to have got him. My dad died in ’77, I think.
Steiger: My dad was always.... Without him, I never would have got here. But he was always like, "Okay, runnin’ the river again? Didn’t you do that already? Aren’t you done with that?" (laughs)
Nissen: "Are you sure?"
Steiger: I wanted to show him what I was up to.
Paulson: Our mother was like that, more than.... I mean, "Aren’t you ever gonna get a real job? You can’t do this forever. You’ve gotta go do somethin’ after this."
Nissen: "When are you gonna grow up?"
Paulson: Yeah, "When are you gonna grow up? My God, you’re thirty-some years old."
Nissen: And here we all are, still wondering the same thing.
Paulson: Exactly, still doin’ it. I remember tellin’ her, "I’ll do this all my life, Mom, that’s just the way it is. Whatever I’m doin’, I’ll still be somehow, some way, involved with the river thing."
Steiger: Do you go to church?
Paulson: Hell, no, haven’t done that since I was a kid.
Steiger: I guess you couldn’t be.
Paulson: Oh, you could. They do it all the time. There’s Jack Mormons all the time.
Nissen: Well, he shows up at weddings and funerals.
Paulson: Weddings and funerals. No, I fell out of that a long time ago--structured religion.
Steiger: Was that before you ever got to the river, did that ever have anything to do with it?
Paulson: I fell out of it before then--as soon as I left home, basically. Out of my Mom’s sight, "I’m done with that!" She tried to be a good Mormon, she did. She tried hard at it. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I’m not one to judge any of that stuff. If people want to believe, let ’em believe whatever they want to believe. I hope it worked out for her. She’s gone now. I hope some of it that she believed all her life, worked--but who knows.
Steiger: We were talkin’ about it up on this thing that we just did.
Paulson: (to Nissen) They just spread Fred and Carol’s ...
Steiger: ... ashes.
Nissen: Ohhhh. Well, you said you were gonna be at Vermilion Cliffs, but without any preface, and so I didn’t [unclear].
Steiger: Well, we went up there. We had to, as per Fred’s instructions, we had to spread some of him off the top of the Paria Plateau, lookin’ down on.... So we had to go up there and find this one spot, which was pretty good.
Nissen: That’s great.
Steiger: But we were talkin’ about it, just about religion and stuff, and where you go, if you get to heaven, or where you end up once you leave outta here. And somehow the topic came up, "Well, if you know a good Mormon...." You don’t even have to do anything yourself, if you can just get them to line it out for you....
Paulson: Hang it, ’cause they’ll take care of you later. (laughter) "Poor dumb bastard couldn’t do it on his own--I got to."
Steiger: So it’s like I’d better make friends with somebody who’s got a line in there.
Paulson: That’s right. Yeah, I haven’t denounced it, because I’m stayin’ close, just in case. (laughter) What the hell, they might be right.
Nissen: Cover all those bases! (laughter)
Paulson: It might be right, I don’t know.
Steiger: That was news to me, that you didn’t have to actually repent yourself, or do any of that. If you even just had a good friend....
Paulson: Yeah, you gotta die, and then they’ll baptize you.
Steiger: Put the fix in for ya’, yeah.
Nissen: Whether you want it or not, you’re gonna in some cases.
Steiger: Well, I guess we ought to.... I’m trying to think of some other intelligent topic to cover here.
Paulson: I know we’ve been over a lot--I think. I don’t know if any of it’s any good.
Steiger: It’s all good to me. But it helps to be able to shut your eyes and kind of picture it as it was. I sure can. I can remember.... Boy, I remember doin’ that trip with you, and I remember the whole Sanderson crew back then. And it’s fun, just lookin’ at these pictures: Roger and Giant and Hoss and Derald, and the Diamond girls when they were young--all those guys. Just the whole outfit.
Paulson: Yup, exactly.
Steiger: Quite a chapter.
Nissen: Well, and that’s why it does need to be recorded, before it is lost, and the memories fade.
Steiger: Well, we’re gonna lose 99.9 percent of it anyway.
Nissen: Yes, but you’re gonna get some.
Steiger: Yeah, a little somethin’s better than nothin.
Nissen: Yeah.
Steiger: I had forgotten--I know that we talked about this when did that trip, just about you seein’ three flips, but I had even forgotten that. I had in my mind, "Oh, yeah, there was a Sanderson boat that went over, and then there was an ARTA boat...."
Nissen: Sanderson boat that went over, and then there was [another] Sanderson boat that went over.
Steiger: There was an ARTA.
Nissen: Well, the ARTA in Soap Creek was one of the first ones, wasn’t it?
Steiger: They tipped one over in Soap Creek?
Nissen: Yeah. Then there was the classic Life magazine picture.
Paulson: I just remember the Lava picture, yeah. I don’t remember the Soap Creek one.
Steiger: I don’t remember hearin’ about the Soap Creek one.
Paulson: Well, hey, we believe.
Steiger: I’m just tryin’ to feature it.
Nissen: The water. The hung some.... I don’t....
Paulson: Water always pushes you over somehow.
Steiger: Yeah.
Nissen: And that had to be early seventies.
Steiger: I remember Tour West at Cave Springs.
Paulson: Right, I know that one.
Steiger: I remember Tour West at President Harding.
Paulson: Yeah.
Steiger: Tour West at Crystal.
Paulson: Yeah, Tour West.
Steiger: Canyoneers at Crystal.
Paulson: Did Western roll one at Crystal in the high water?
Steiger: Western at Crystal.
Nissen: In the very high water, because they did the end-over, didn’t they?
Steiger: Yeah, Western at Crystal.
Nissen: The loop.
Steiger: Mark Wynham, Nankoweap. Myron Cook, Fort Lee, tipped one over at Bedrock.
Paulson: Yes.
Nissen: Oh, yeah.
Steiger: Arizona River Runners, there was a kid named Russell, who was a pilot, and he was down there with Kim Claypool, and he got a kink in his gas line, and he tipped over on Bedrock, and didn’t lose nothin’.
Paulson: No kidding? I think that’d be a bad spot.
Steiger: Well, he was just so anal--he was really meticulous in....
Paulson: Tying everything?
Nissen: Had it all tidy.
Steiger: He was tied in so good they didn’t lose hardly anything--I mean, almost nothin’.
Nissen: We lost the entire kitchen.
Steiger: Well, Kim Claypool kind of got ahold of him, and everybody helped. And what I heard there was that they took the tubes off, but they righted that boat. I’m glad to hear this, because if I ever see it again, I’m not gonna bother takin’ the side tubes off.
Paulson: Hell no, you don’t need to.
Steiger: Well, they took the side tubes off, but they got it back right-side up. They put the tubes back on and they went on. Usually when people go over it, it was like "End of story, we quit!"
Paulson: Well, my thing was, I thought we were probably the first one, I thought we were probably gonna have to take the side tubes off, but hell, let’s give it a try, see what happens first, before we take ’em off. And it worked, so....
Steiger: Were people uphill? Did you get ’em on the beach?
Paulson: They were uphill, yeah. We had like four or five people get a pivot point, hold it. Because if you just start pullin’ it, you’re just gonna drag it. You have to have somebody....
Steiger: And then you had everybody straight uphill, and you didn’t have mechanical advantage or nothin’?
Paulson: No. Had uphill some, but then pullin’ on it, with people pushin’ on the bottom part, pullin’ on it until you get.... Once it starts goin’, and bites in on this side, then the other guys can go help pull, too. And then you go.... And it’s slow. I mean, you just get a foot or less at a time: "Pull! 1-2-3, pull!" You know, that kind of thing.
Steiger: Were you tyin’ it off?
Paulson: We had it tied across.... No, we didn’t tie it off, we just hung onto it.
Steiger: Wow. Boy, that’s [unclear 271:53].
Nissen: I don’t remember it taking any--for that third flip--and great amount of time.
Paulson: No, I’d say, what, a minute or two. But what I’m trying to say, you just don’t grab it and ...
Steiger: ... throw it over. No, but you get a bite.
Paulson: Yeah, a bite, and then another bite, and another bite, until.... (aside about leaving)
Steiger: Yeah, okay, I’m gonna stop this, just because we’ll record that [unclear].
Paulson: Yeah.
[END OF INTERVIEW at 272:14 minutes]